| Author |
Message |
   
Kevin W. Paulisse
Moderator
Username: Paulisse
Post Number: 12399
Registered: 11-1999
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 08:20 am: | 
|
Having the question marks and the numbers is a way to force the browser to reload a modified page, in addition to a way to mark the links unvisited when new activity occurs.
If you remove this string of numbers (by specifying noqm=1), your users will either need to configure their browser caches correctly, or otherwise reload the page when changes are made. See "my post does not show up" in the troubleshooting documentation of your board. |
Juan M. Gonzalez
Senior Member
Username: Juan_g
Post Number: 111
Registered: 11-2001
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 09:10 am: |
|
As said previously (please see the archives of this thread), if you use noqm=1 to have search engine friendly URLs, in this case you need another way to facilitate that your board users see new posts instead of old cache (one of the functions of "?..." in the URLs).
For example, on an Apache (Unix or Linux) server, this can be done with a small .htaccess text file (in the messages directory) like the following:
quote:<FilesMatch "\.html$">
Header append Expires 0
Header append Cache-Control max-age=0
</FilesMatch>
This .htaccess file works fine, solving any cache issues. Hope this helps.
|
Gerald Dorrington
Junior Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 7
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 10:03 am: |
|
Juan, I think that I managed to do what you suggested, although I cannot see the file with my FileManager. (When I try try create that file a second time, it tells me that there is already one there).
Could you look at my board test area and tell me if it is working?
As I learn with everything about software - every up side has a matching downside. What is the catch with this one? (Kevin's silence on this .htaccess thing is very ominous  ). There are also some scary paragraphs at the end of that link that you gave.
(Message edited by Gerald_d on October 09, 2003) |
Gerald Dorrington
Junior Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 8
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 12:02 pm: |
|
Kevin, when I tell my users to push the "Refresh" button, they come back after an hour and tell me they have searched all over their keyboards for it. Or they ask me if they must use an upper case "R" when they type the word "Refresh". As far as they are concerned, a "Browser" eats plants while a predator eats other animals. I really can't expect my users to change anything at their end.  |
Juan M. Gonzalez
Senior Member
Username: Juan_g
Post Number: 112
Registered: 11-2001
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 01:17 pm: |
|
You can upload (as ASCII), and view, rename, etc., your .htaccess file with any FTP program, for example.
I've done some testing at your test area, and it seems to work, without any need for the Refresh button (usually F5 on Internet Explorer and other browsers). But you should verify with your host that your server is Apache.
If the .htaccess solution is not mentioned more often, it's just because it's an Apache-specific solution. There is an Apache version for Windows, but Apache is most used on Unix or Linux servers, and Microsoft uses another server software. Exceptions aside, normally you cannot use .htaccess files on one of those ominous Windows servers.
Anyway, currently (October 2003) 64.61% of the web sites on the Internet are using Apache, according to the Netcraft Web Server Survey.
This .htaccess (to include HTTP expiration headers) is a very good solution, mainly for Unix or Linux servers. Your users don't need to use any Refresh button. The only small down side is that cache is less used (and therefore your monthly traffic is a little higher) because pages are verified and refreshed automatically when, for example, users click on a link to the page and there is a new version (new messages, etc.). |
Gerald Dorrington
Junior Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 10
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 01:35 pm: |
|
Thanks Juan!
There is a good reason why www.Lexiconn.com is recommended as a host company - they respond fast, and efficiently. Copy of correspondence:
Gerald:
We do run Apache. I checked the .htaccess file you placed in the
"messages" directory and it looks fine. It should work as expected.
Rob M.
> Hi All
>
> It has been suggested to me that I should include a .htaccess file to my
> Discus messages if you guys are running Linux on Apache. Here is where I got
> the advice:
>
> http://support.discusware.com/forum/messages/7/817.html
>
> Well, do you run Apache?
>
> All the best
> Gerald Dorrington (www.scapenotes.com)
(Message edited by Gerald_d on October 09, 2003) |
Juan M. Gonzalez
Senior Member
Username: Juan_g
Post Number: 113
Registered: 11-2001
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 06:05 pm: |
|
Nice to see it working for you now. :-)
About the 23.46% using Microsoft servers, they may see for instance:
- Microsoft: How to Make HTTP Headers for All Content to Expire Immediately
- Web Helping Hand: IIS 5 Administration - HTTP Headers Tab
etc...
I think Microsoft servers are simpler but much less flexible than Apache (Unix, Linux) servers. If you are on a shared Microsoft host, then you will need the cooperation of your web host to change this HTTP headers setting, and also for many other things for other issues, which you would be able to set by yourself on an Apache server. (For example if you want to change file permissions, etc.).
My experience with Apache hosts has been much better (more flexible, secure, stable) than with NT ones. I don't think I will use again Microsoft server software. Just one point of view. ;-) |
Dirk Seffern
Senior Member
Username: Seffern
Post Number: 222
Registered: 05-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 09:06 am: |
|
Juan,
For this .htaccess file:
quote:
<filesmatch>
Header append Expires 0
Header append Cache-Control max-age=0
</filesmatch>
Which permission we have to set? 777?
When you say "message directory" - do you mean msg_index directory in the discus_admin_xxx directory?
Why I can not see my htaccess file anymore, once it is moved on the the server via ftp? |
Juan M. Gonzalez
Senior Member
Username: Juan_g
Post Number: 115
Registered: 11-2001
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 02:06 pm: |
|
Dirk, that .htaccess file isn't correct, probably because the option for HTML code was enabled when posting. A correct .htaccess is:
quote:<FilesMatch "\.html$">
Header append Expires 0
Header append Cache-Control max-age=0
</FilesMatch>
Normally there is no problem with file permissions. For example, I use the default rw-r--r-- (644) without changes for .htaccess, which is usually enough (world-read, etc.). If you need group-write, then you may use 664.
The directory is the one that includes all the topic directories with the message files. Almost always its name is "messages", and you can see it for example on the browser, in the URLs of your Discus pages. (Unless that you customized it with the message_dir and message_url options in discus.conf; this one is a tricky change and surely few people do it; I did it to shorten the URLs, by the way).
You should see all your files without problem with any FTP or telnet program. Try refreshing the FTP view, or verifying that you have the default file mask *.* or equivalent to see all files, not only *.html. |
Gerald Dorrington
Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 12
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 01:23 pm: |
|
I have FTP program Gossamer Fileman. To see the .htaccess file, I had to change my "Preferences" to show "Hidden" files as well. My permissions are also rw-r--r-- |
Gerald Dorrington
Intermediate Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 28
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - 12:47 am: |
|
Google has no problems to find things on my site - but it finds a little too much! Here is a google on "Latsky Radio" and the results page has my site (Scapenotes) right on top. But, the top results are obscured with the icon descriptions: "Top of page Previous message Next message Bottom of page Link to this message By Scapey ". Any suggestions how to improve this? |
Kevin W. Paulisse
Moderator
Username: Paulisse
Post Number: 13266
Registered: 11-1999
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - 08:26 am: |
|
That to me looks like the ALT text for the up-down-top-bottom icons next to each post. Consider removing the ALT text from the individual_message part of the skin.
Or, to get more advanced, make the META description field equal to the first 300 characters of the first message. Note that this would include using an IF-THEN statement and taking an element from an array, for which you'll need to look in the instructions for the template language:
http://support.discusware.com/manuals/templlng/ |
Gerald Dorrington
Intermediate Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 30
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 30, 2004 - 09:40 am: |
|
Thanks for the pointers.
I thought that Google ignores META descriptions? |
Kevin W. Paulisse
Moderator
Username: Paulisse
Post Number: 13268
Registered: 11-1999
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 08:04 am: |
|
Even if google ignores META tags (which I haven't heard before), other search engines use them. |
Gerald Dorrington
Intermediate Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 34
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 11:49 am: |
|
I don't think that Google totally ignores META tags. But, if you look at META descriptions in the source code of my page that Google found for "Latsky Radio", you can see that they had no influence on Google. |
Judith B. Currier
Intermediate Member
Username: Judy
Post Number: 43
Registered: 08-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 02:08 pm: |
|
When I put a search engine on our site, I had to tell it to ignore the "alt" descriptions -- otherwise I got the same kind of mess that you are getting with Google.
Have you read the Google webmaster info? Just glancing through it I wondered whether if you told Google to ignore gif and jpg files as far as their link activity whether they would ignore the alt descriptions of those files (it doesn't say exactly). See, for example, http://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html
Also, you might try asking your question in a webmaster's forum on search engines as no doubt others have encountered the same problem. |
Gerald Dorrington
Intermediate Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 35
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 02:38 pm: |
|
Judith, I read that Google webmaster info only about 2 hours ago and it is still slowly sinking in . . . . .
How would I try to tell it to ignore "alt" descriptions? Any hints much appreciated. |
Judith B. Currier
Intermediate Member
Username: Judy
Post Number: 44
Registered: 08-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - 03:44 pm: |
|
Gerald,
When I read about your problem it struck a bell with me and I went to the internal search engine that we have to see what adjustments I had made -- I told it to ignore alt.
From reading the Google I couldn't see how to do this either, but I could see how to have them not follow links of gif and jpg files (through the robot.txt) and I thought perhaps that then it wouldn't pick up the alt if it was ignoring those files.
I'm not sure why more people don't get into this problem though. My search engine picked up all my navigation buttons. Google doesn't seem to, and I haven't done anything special. That was one reason that I thought you might ask on a site such as http://www.webmasterforum.com/ where they have a whole section that discusses search engines. I'm not sure this is the place to try though as when I Googled them I got the same type of description problem you are talking about! There are a bunch of these forums and someone might have worked around the problem before. It sounds tedious trying it with robot.txt as you have to wait forever to see what works.
Interesting though -- I'm curious if you can solve it.
Judy |
Gerald Dorrington
Intermediate Member
Username: Gerald_d
Post Number: 36
Registered: 02-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, April 01, 2004 - 04:02 am: |
|
Thanks Judy, I will look into this during the next few week. |
Judith B. Currier
Intermediate Member
Username: Judy
Post Number: 45
Registered: 08-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 03:36 pm: |
|
Gerald,
For another reason I finally got around to making myself up a robots.txt file. It seems like a good thing to do. By doing this you could keep the robots from looking at your files that contain images. I believe that would help you. A good article is at: http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm |
Download
Purchase
Contact Us
Closed: New threads not accepted on this page
Download
Purchase
Contact Us