Google search / reframing web pages

[d000hg]

Arrghh! I was hoping to avoid *yet more* trickery. The reframe JS code is bad enough. I've jumped through several hoops already, resorting to plenty of PHP to overcome various problems. I could probably code such 'trickery' myself, but the tools doesn't have unlimited flexibility in this regard.

This isn't really in the "yet more trickery" category, rather it's "how to do it properly" and should mean less hacking overall. If you were starting from scratch it would seem less like trickery and more sensible - updating an existing site is much more messy though.

Does your tool have an option to disable frames and do something else? I never heard of the tool you mentioned, is it new or old?

[Platypus]

Nick et al,

I'm going to look at CSS for frames. But I have a short-term problem to solve. I hope you can help.

Currently each web page looks something like this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/mypage.php

That page loads 3 frames:
header_mypage.php [header]
left_mypage.php [navigation]
body_mypage.php [content]

Good idea or not, I recently decided to rename 'mypage' to something more useful, more Google friendly I hoped, to (let's say)

http://www.mywebsite.com/about-platypus.php

And I changed .htaccess to say (for anyone who had bookmarked or indexed the old location, incl. Google)

redirect 301 /html/mypage.php http://www.mywebsite.com/html/about-platypus.php

Problem:
Google indexes the content to the old location:

http://www.mywebsite.com/body_mypage.php

that page no longer exists... but worse, clicking the link now returns a blank page saying:

No input file specified.

In fact, any missing .php page on the site returns that. Which is a bugger because my custom 404 page is not being picked up. That page contains the site navigation, so I could cope with the link being broken until Google picks up the renamed page, if the 404 page was displayed. It isn't.

So a work-around was in .htaccess

redirect 301 /html/body_mypage.php http://www.mywebsite.com/html/about-platypus.php

This won't cause a loop because about-platypus.php doesn't reference the old named page frame (body_mypage). It references body_about-platypus.php

So I think my immediate problem is simply the 'no input file specified' for missing php pages when I thought it should load my custom 404 page, mentioned in .htaccess like this:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mywebsite.com/html/error404.html

With that fixed, I think I'm ok !
The 404 redirect works for .html pages.

Can you help with this specific problem?

[Platypus]

Does your tool have an option to disable frames and do something else? I never heard of the tool you mentioned, is it new or old?

It's the latest version of a tool that's been around for years.

I can get it to disable the frames with a few clicks. Then I think I can insert code into the header to do the CSS stuff. My mind's now made up now to do this, but I think it will take me some time to find the time to get this done and tested, so in the meantime, solving problem I pose in the post above will sort me out quickly for the short term.

I think.

Thanks

[NickFitz]

So I think my immediate problem is simply the 'no input file specified' for missing php pages when I thought it should load my custom 404 page, mentioned in .htaccess like this:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.mywebsite.com/html/error404.html

With that fixed, I think I'm ok !
The 404 redirect works for .html pages.

Can you help with this specific problem?

This chap has a potential fix

[Platypus]

This chap has a potential fix

Brilliant! Thanks

I have to muck about with mod_rewrite a bit more, because I want:

body_mypage.php to redirect to about-platypus.php

But

anythingelse.php to redirect to error404.html

I'm sure it can be done.

[scotspine]

eeee. cool. i had no idea you could do that (the css scrolling thing). gives me a few ideas for things in the pipline. ta.