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'.