To: mlt@mltweb.com
Subject: ClickNotes; Index files



February 5, 2003


Greetings  Mike Taylor @ Clicknotes


Following for your information, sorry if it is a duplicate. I just ran
across a good example of this.

The following web site has a problem that I've seen on other sites. It's a web design issue we should be careful to avoid in our web pages and design.

example:

This is the original link... click it and it works fine. 

http://www.directives.doe.gov/GPO/fr13no02-21.html 

But back out the last page and click it again and you get to a default index for the web site.

like this;
http://www.directives.doe.gov/GPO/ 

The default index shows everything posted in the web folder, even stuff you may not want people to find or see.  With this default index, a user can scan through all of the files on a web site. Not a good thing if we have an old copy of a roster which we turned off the link to, but forgot to delete from the web.

The problem:

Each folder in a web site expects to have a default page called "index".
If it's not a page you created, then the web will create one by default and that is what you see in the GPO folder above.  So when we create a web site, if we don't deliberately put our own "index" page in each folder, then we leave the web site open for someone to use the trick I showed you above and get access to all sorts of interesting stuff.  The web hosting service can turn this function off, but if they forget to, you've got problems. 

The work around is easy.  Put an index file in each folder.  This can either be the primary web page for the folder (like your home page) or it could be a bogus web page (called "INDEX") that redirects the browser to the correct page.

You can see one way to do this on my web site.  

Click on this URL... 
www.mltweb.com 

Since we haven't specified the web page, we end up at the web site default "Index" page.  
In this case instead of using the default page, I created a web page and named it "index". My index page is a simple welcome page that redirects users to my home page.  See, we could have typed the link like this:
www.mltweb.com/index.htm and ended up in the same place.

I'd like people to use my home page  www.mltweb.com/mltweb.htm   but that isn't always going to happen. So I've taken advantage of the default "index" behavior to help get people to the right place.

Mike,

P.S.  Don't know how to do the automatic re-direct? Check into the subject of "Meta Tags" or stay tuned here for a future message on the subject. Orrrrrrr you could use that age-old trick of web design an just view the source code of my index page to see how I did it.....

Good luck and have fun!

Mt

This message was sent to members of Mike's ClickNotes mailing list. Tips and tricks for non-technical people who are trying to maintain affiliate web sites. To view a simple archive or previous message or subscribe to the mail list visit Mike's web site http://www.mltweb.com/tools/clicknotes/index.htm