cPanel redirects and custom error pages

[Manna8]

Hi Everyone!

I am trying to do a redirect on my website as I have people accessing an old part of our site but don't seem to be having much luck and the tutorial videos are too short.

I have gone into cpanel and redirected them from www.speakonlytome.com/newsite (I want to redirect all traffic that has /newsite in the url)to www.speakonlytome.com/home.html but when I check it, I get a 500 Internal server error. So that led me to try custom error pages but again the video is too brief.

So bearing in mind I am a complete newbie and need my hand held....how do I do a correct site redirect so that all the pages with '/newsite' go to the url specified and while I am at it
How do I create custom error pages with some text and a link back to our site?

Thanks!
Caroline

[Matt]

Do you need the old site? Why not just rename public_html to public_htmlOLD then move /public_htmlOLD/newsite up one level. Once /newsite has been move to the same level as where /public_html used to be, rename /newsite to /public_html

Would that work?

[sergey]

Caroline,

I have modified your .htaccess file and you site doesn't show an Internal Server Error.

[Manna8]

Hi Matt

That's great and we will definitely try that but I would love to know how to use those functions effectively for next time. And would like to create custom error pages using our logo and links etc

Kind regards
Caroline

[Manna8]

Thanks Sergey but when I type Index of /newsite into the browser I get the directory page ie: Index of /newsite? How do I get it to automatically redirect to my home page?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Manna8

Hi Matt

That's great and we will definitely try that but I would love to know how to use those functions effectively for next time. And would like to create custom error pages using our logo and links etc

Kind regards
Caroline

Custom error pages are different than redirection. A custom error page would simply turn that ugly 500 error you had earlier into something that looked like your own website, or they could use javascript to redirect the user to the homepage if you wanted to do something like that.

All you need to do is make a web page like usual and name it 404.shtml or 500.shtml and put standard HTML or SHTML code in the file so that it looks like what you want it to or does what you want it to.

Unfortunately I do not know what Sergey put in your .htaccess file. perhaps he or you will share it with the rest of the community so that others trying to do the same thing can benefit from this post.

[Manna8]

Hi Matt

Yes I understand they are different.
Custom pages: I would like to have them on the site for any issue that arises not just this redirect issue.
Redirect: We have done a robot.txt file with a /newsite no follow but it still seems to be following it.
I know Sergey did some work on my .htaccess but now I get Index of/ newsite - a directory of the pages? So that hasn't worked either

What's next?
Caroline

[Matt]

Not all robots pay attention to robots.txt

However a robots.txt is not going to do any redirection for your human visitors.

I see a directory listing at Index of /newsite

I assume that is something you do not want?

[Manna8]

No I don't. I don't want anyone except for me to access /newsite - could it be just as simple as changing the folder name?

Thanks
Caroline

[Matt]

Why not just delete it?

Yes, you can rename it, or you can put an index page in there or you can turn of directory indexing in your htaccess file or use the index manager in cPanel which will modify the .htaccess file for you.