how do i drop index.? from my domain name root?

[xecute]

I have seen more and more sites where the home url is www.mydomain.url and they don't have index.htm, .html or .php after it when the page loads up.

How do you get your site to not show the index extension after the domain name?

Also is there any benefits from this or is it purely cosmetic? (especialy concerning search engines).

P.S. thanks for any advice in advance and sorry if this has already been asked before (which i am sure it probabaly has) but i couldn't find the thread if it has been :(

[incrediblehelp]

It is a server side thing. You have to set up and name your default document (home page) at the server level.

Then make sure that you link to (refer) to the domain name itself on your internal navigation and not a relative URL like "/index.php".

Of course if others websites are already linking to you using:

www.domainname.com/index.php

and you have no control over changing it there isn't much that can be down, but that is usually not an issue because far more people will link to the root domain:

www.domainname.com/

when referencing the home page

Now when you see websites do a redirect when clicking on the link from the SERP (search engine result page) it is because the company themselves have a 302 redirect from the root domain to the sub directory or page. For example when searching for "Century 21" on Google you see in the SERP it is http://www.century21.com/, but when clicking on it it redirects to:

http://www.century21.com/home.aspx

blah!

[xecute]

By server side do you mean via cpanel (which is what is on my host) and in there put a redirection on say www.mydomain.net/index.htm to redirect to www.mydomain.net?

So it will hold the info held on the index.htm but will show the page as being at www.mydomain.net without any index extension?

sorry for the noobie questions.

[Easywebdev]

When you send a request for domain.com the webserver software (whether it be apache, IIS, litehttp etc) will return whatever page is configured as the default.

In apache you can define the default page to serve, it could be anything from index.html to someotherpage.name

Most webservers have a range of defaults that they read from left to right such as (index.htm, index.html, index.shtml, index.php3, index.php) etc.

You should direct links to the domain only unless you have set your default page to be keyword_keyword_keyword.php for SEO purposes.

[cyanide]

If your index.htm page is showing up in the url, it's probably because you are linking to it.

So.... stop linking to it and link to the domain itself

[xecute]

I am not linking to it.

If you type in my URL http://www.serious-sounds.net it automaticaly adds the '/index.htm' extension to it :(

I just thought i maybe missing something i could do via either ftp, shell or Cpanel. Thats why i asked, but i am guessing by the replies here that it must be the Apache servers configuration and i would have to ask my host?

Oh well, atleast now i know it wasn't some trick i was missing out on.

Thanks for your help peeps.

[xecute]

I am not linking to it.

If you type in my URL http://www.serious-sounds.net it automaticaly adds the '/index.htm' extension to it :(

I just thought i maybe missing something i could do via either ftp, shell or Cpanel. Thats why i asked, but i am guessing by the replies here that it must be the Apache servers configuration and i would have to ask my host?

Oh well, atleast now i know it wasn't some trick i was missing out on.

Thanks for your help peeps.

[cyanide]

oh yeah, that is weird... and unusual

Do you have an htaccess file in your root directory?
If you do, can you show the contents?

[netroact]

Looks like it's fixed. Could you share with us what you or your host did to change it? Was it in the Apache config file?
Oops! Din't realize this was an old post.

[activeco]

Originally Posted by netroact

Could you share with us what you or your host did to change it? Was it in the Apache config file?
Oops! Din't realize this was an old post.

It's always actual for new generations.

Apache provides the 'DirectoryIndex' directive which determines default file (or more) for the directory root. You can set it up in conf file or even better in .htaccess file, per directory.

E.g.: DirectoryIndex netroact.php

[netroact]

Thanks

[johnxuster]

Most webservers have a range of defaults that they read from left to right

[watto]

you can redirect in your webmaster tools.

watto

[adserverexpert]

if you entering ur site name, it automatically redirect to index page without displaying index.php or html or htm in url.