Best home page redirection practice

[PaulMycroft]

What is the best way to redirect my default /index.php page to the actual home page, located in a directory?

e.g. www.domain.com/index.php to www.domain.com/home/

I have added a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file but to actually MAKE the visitor go to the home page in the /home/ directory, I have a meta refresh on /index.php.

Any advice is much appreciated.

[Jean-Luc]

It is not good for SEO to redirect the home page. It would be better to make the content of www.domain.com/home/ available at www.domain.com/ without redirect.

I am aware that some applications force you to put the home page in a subdirectory. If you cannot avoid this, use a 302 redirect from www.domain.com/ to www.domain.com/subdirectory/. I would avoid JavaScript and META "refresh" as they have no clear meaning in SEO terms.

Jean-Luc

[Feydakin]

Why would you put your first level content one directory low?? It just doesn't make any sense to me..

That said, a simple 301 is the best solution for this problem.. If you have access to your .htaccess file you can do it there with this command..

Redirect 301 /index.php http://www.domain.com/home

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect and shouldn't be used for any permanent solution for redirection..

[PaulMycroft]

Hi there,

Thanks for your responses!

My home page is in the /home/ directory because my blog software required a directory. My home page has a blog integrated:

Professional Web Design | Email Newsletters | Search Engine Optimization

My .htaccess file already has the following code:

. . . .
redirect 301 /index.html Professional Web Design | Email Newsletters | Search Engine Optimization

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^paulmycroft.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.paulmycroft.com/$1 [L,R=301]
. . . .

Should I remove the meta refresh from the /index.html file and leave the 301 in place in the .htaccess file? Should I do a 301 redirect at the domain level in GoDaddy or on the server in the .htaccess file, as I have outlined?

TIA.

[Jean-Luc]

Originally Posted by PaulMycroft

My home page is in the /home/ directory because my blog software required a directory.

Isn't it a WordPress blog ? I often install WordPress blogs in the "main" directory.

Originally Posted by PaulMycroft

Should I remove the meta refresh from the /index.html file

Why do you need an index.html ? If it is not there, your Apache server will start from the index.php by default.

Jean-Luc

[computergenius]

Originally Posted by PaulMycroft

What is the best way to redirect my default /index.php page to the actual home page, located in a directory?

e.g. www.domain.com/index.php to www.domain.com/home/

I have added a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file but to actually MAKE the visitor go to the home page in the /home/ directory, I have a meta refresh on /index.php.

Any advice is much appreciated.

You wouldn't need a meta refresh if the 301 was working.

In your first post, you said that you wanted to 301 index.php to home.

But in a later post, you said that your htaccess redirected index.HTML (not php) to home

Which is it?

[PaulMycroft]

Hi Pete,

I actually had both in place but wasn't sure which one to use.

I have removed the meta refresh from /index.html and applied a 301 from that page to index.php in my /home/ directory instead.

I believe that this is the correct way to implement this.

TIA.