MY VERY DETAILED REQUEST/QUESTION TO MY IP

INTRO: This may well be a simple problem/request for you, but I am taking the liberty of providing you with as much information as possible (rather than too little) in the hope of making your task easier. I also include a suggestion to improve your product/service.

SUMMARY: I have been unable to create or modify a .htaccess file so that my website at its new location will do what it did with all my previous providers: i.e., requests to browsers will return an .html file even if the file designation is not typed in: e.g.: a request for mysite.org/filename will bring up a file named mysite.org/filename,html

When my website was hosted in the past by other providers, a URL typed into a browser without an type designation (like .html) would nevertheless bring up the file which was specified by filename (without any .html).

For example, typing in http://banzhaf.net/ec2000 would bring up http://banzhaf.net/ec2000.html - even though the URL typed into the browser did not include ".html"

To obtain the same result/functionality with ipage, I attempted to modify the .htaccess file which your system had placed into my main directors.

In other words, several days earlier, I had gone to ipage’s .htaccess Editor page and exercised the option “Open Director Browsing.” The apparently result was a .htaccess file placed in my main directory which read: “Options +Indexes”

The result was what I wanted: visitors to my site will view the contents of any directory or subdirectory unless the directory or subdirectory contain a file named index.html. Thus I add a file named index.html to any directory or subdirectory where I do NOT want the contents to be visible. Thus, without such a file, the contents are visible to visitors.

To add the new functionality I desired, I used Notepad to construct a file like this:
Options +Indexes
AddType text/html .shtml
AddHandler server-parsed .html
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes

In other words, to the first line (which was identical to the one your system created), I added four (4) lines designed (I hoped) to allow browsers to bring up files of the form XXX.html or YYY.shtml even if the visitor did not type in the file designations.

The file created in Notepad was named htaccess.txt (with no period before the h). I then used my FTP to add that file to my main directory. I used the .txt designation on the file because my FTP says that files with that designation are uploaded as ASCII mode rather than binary mode.

Then, once the file had been uploaded to my main directory, I used the FTP to change the name of the file as follows:
[as transmitted] = htaccess.txt [no period before h, but with a .txt at the end]
[name changed to] = .htaccess [with a period before the h, and without a .txt at the end]

Unfortunately, this “fix’ did not seem to work. Several examples are set forth below:

browser requests = http://banzhaf.net/ec2000 BUT system return “Page Not Found”
browser requests = http://banzhaf.net/ec2000.html and the page is properly displayed

browser requests = http://banzhaf.net/docs/cnn BUT system return “Page Not Found”
browser requests = http://banzhaf.net/docs/cnn.html and the page is properly displayed

Please tell me what I must do to make my website work the way it did for years with other providers. Do I have to modify the code in my .htacess file, use two different .htacess files in the main directory, add other or different .htacess files in subdirectories, or something else.


MY IP's RESPONSE

It is not possible to access the links the way you have given. In the link: http://banzhaf.net/ec2000.html , ec2000.html is a HTML file. Accessing the link http://banzhaf.net/ec2000 means, accessing the folder ec2000 and not the exact required page. HTML pages cannot be accessed without full URLs. It will obviously give 'Page not found error'.