Posted by Jim Higson on 02/28/06 12:26

John wrote:

> Problem:
>
> I'm looking after a web site (myjourney.ca) which WAS hosted on site,
> using a program (Article Manager) where all pages had the "shtml"
> extension. Many of these pages are still indexed in various search
> engines. So far, during February I have had well over a 1000 hits in
> almost 400 sessions to these now "non-existing" pages, resulting in
> potential browsers getting a "Not Found" message (The requested URL
> /mainpage.shtml was not found on this server.).
>
> We changed to a different system, (the domain name remains the same) and
> all pages now have the "html" extension.

Seems like, you're just getting into the same problem in future. What about
when you switch to .php or whatever and have to rename all your URLs again?

The URL doesn't have to be the literal name of the file. Why would the user
care if you store static html files or use shtml? They don't, and shouldn't
be exposed to this. Instead of http://example.com/example.html just use
http://example.com/example as the address - that way you can change how the
site is hosted any number of times and the URL stays the same.

Tim Berners-Lee has written on this subject. See:
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

--
Jim

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