Fighting to navigate site...

[mdshunk]

The site in it's latest incarnation is fighting me at every turn. First, yesterday I noticed that the redirect from the old selfhlepforums to the new selfhampandmore had "/forums" in the redirect twice. I had to manually remove one of the "/forums" to log on. Second (and most important) is that the site seems to no longer work at all with either Mozilla or Opera (my two preferred browsers). With either of these browsers, any link you click on or type just takes you to the main forums page. Regrettably, I had to fire up Explorer to do anything on the site.

[Homer]

Also, the Search Engine results no longer point to the proper posts.

We will need to wait for the bots to remap the site but this will leave many, many dead links in the search engines like this one (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=homer+mdshunk+twinkies&meta=) .

Homer

[dkerr]

Call it growing pains.

In the coming week I will sending out resubmits to the search engines.

Not sure of any other way I can do the change. For the other browsers that you use, I would delete all cookies / history file / and internet catches from these browers, they may be referencing catched pages or history links, if you clear these it may start catching the new page locations and perform properly again with the site.

I still have some twinking to do, and a lot of metatags to modify, which I would like to do at least some of that before resubmitting. I will recheck the setting in the administration panel setting of the forums, to see if I missed anything.

I have set up a custom error 'page not found' page and redirects so that any page that a person goes to and is not found will go to this page where it gives info and link to the new home page. The trickly part is certain specific forum links as you posted doesn't come up correctly, but as I said call it growing pains that I will temporaryly live with, the site will get respidered, the sooner the better.

The other major thing that was done is that there is now no .html files on the site, I was previously rejected by a couple of search engines because I was using .html files instead of .htm files, all regular files are now .htm files.

The forum works with php and mysql database.

I felt I had to use a name that would be appropriate enough to cover a vast topic range and not just home wiring.

Please bear with us, a certain amount of tweaking will get be done, but the major job was done, the fact the database actually sits on different servers at the host helped, as everything could be repositioned and restructured without worrying about the database, as the database didn't move, only the php files that talk to it.

I think this move was neccessary for the continued growth of the site, using one less ip resulted in a small cost reduction, as well as the restructuring I am hoping to capitalize on and branch into even more areas to cover on the site. htm files instead of html files may help me with the search engines. We are still getting hits on a tripod sites we used a couple of years ago, I have a forwarding link there now pointing the way to our new location.

Sometimes growth doesn't come without a few glitches here and there, but they will work themselves out.

Don

[dkerr]

I just checked the redirects when going to www.selfhelpforums.com and www.homewiringandmore.com and they seem to be working for me. You were likely on yesterday when I was still working on it. I have submitted at the domain register a direct - redirect from there, within 3 days when dns propagation is stable, the remaining files and sites selfhelpforums and homewiringandmore will be deleted. Anyone going to homewiringandmore or selfhelpforums will be forwarded to the new site. However bookmarks to specifc articles will likley send them to my custom made opps page 'page not found' with the link to the new home page, so people that had bookmarks to specific articles or specific sections of the site will have to redo their bookmarks.

Also note there was a few strange things happening with the site perticularly the forums for a few minutes yesterday until I changed some of the setting in the administration area of the forums, perticularly its reference to the home directory of the forums.

Don

[dkerr]

I found one error in the administration setup for the reference to the forum home page, just a minor error as their was a trailing / after the location address, which shouldn't be there, not sure if it would have affected anything.

Don

[mdshunk]

Seems like it's working okay now that I've tossed my cookies. Thanks.

[dkerr]

Existing search engine forum links should all work and be redirected properly now. Changed the format of the forwarding redirect at the domain register.

I previously had a forward to http://www.selfhelpandmore.com/forums/index.php

and what was happening the forward would anything after the domain name to the end of index.php

Now I changed that forward to http://www.selfhelpforums.com

so now anything after the domain name address is added right after 'forums' and now goes to the correct place. It should work for you now unless you are in an area that the dns propagation is not complete, which should be almost finished by now, it can take up to 72 hours for changes in name server data to propagate the globe, and up to 24 hours for a forwarding change to be complete at a domain register. By tomorrow all propagation should be finished and stable.

Don

[Wgoodrich]

MdShunk, Tossing your cookies doen't sound like a good thing, actually sounds a bit gross ??

Maybe you should take two asparins, go to bed and call the doctor in the morning. Ha Ha.

Wg