Is there some way for me to change a URL? HELP PLEASE!

[DrHorrible]

I own www.bumfluffnappies.com

I want bumfluffnappies.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=11&chapter=0&zenid=a47cac0275c03b1d44351341ad9e2254 to be named something like www.bumfluffnappies.com/soapnuts so it is easy to write on inserts in samples of soapnuts.

Is that possible??? I bought the .com a while back, but was talked through it step by step so have no idea what I am doing I think I own it through 123reg or summat?

[mrspnut]

You can very easily, and I'll nip upstairs and ask my OH how (he's in the bath)

[DrHorrible]

Love you

[DrHorrible]

[mrspnut]

Oh that's probably easier than what OH was telling me.

He said to get the FTP information and rename the page in the root directory, but he also said that you'd need to rename your links.

It took a while before we were talking about the same thing though

[DrHorrible]

I knew an internet business was a bad idea

I'm sure everything you are both saying makes perfect sense

[navyeyelasH]

Dr Horrible if you have MSN and don't mind using desktop assistant (where basically someone in a different place to you takes control of your computer for a short period of time) I can do it for you if you like?

Probably not totally security conscious to let a total stranger have control of your pc (although you could see what I was doing and take control back at any time) but I am not evil or anything. Normally

[singleWhiteMale]

You really don't want to link to the url you posted, because it contains a zenid parameter. That's the session id for a customer's shopping cart. The link to the soapnuts section is just this bit:

bumfluffnappies.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=11&chapter=0

There are a couple of problems with LL's suggestion.
First, it doesn't do what you asked for . The shortcut url would end in .html.

Second, doing a redirect with meta-tags causes a second read of the page and some browsers don't like it.

I suggest you put some redirect statements in your site's .htaccess file. You need to edit a file called .htaccess in the root directory of your site and add the following line:

Redirect 301 /soapnuts bumfluffnappies.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=11&chapter=0

That's it!

I think your site has a cPanel admin page. If so you can use the File Manager to edit the .htaccess. Just click on File Manager and tell it to open the Document Root for your site. Take the option to show hidden files. You should be able to see .htaccess on the list of files. Select it and click Edit.

[DrHorrible]

Oh thank f*ck for that - how can you see me gibbering??

NavyeyelasH - thank you for the offer, I think I'll wait a bit and let the wabbit do her thing (she has fiddled with my site etc before)

[navyeyelasH]

"fiddled with your site"

[laughing like a school girl smiley needed here]

No problem DrHorrible good luck with it x

[DrHorrible]

lol

[MrVibrating]

sWM your solution is not right either (although it may appear to have the desired effect) - the 301 redirect tells the browser that the /soapnuts page doesn't exist any more and you should go to index.php?main_page=page&id=11&chapter=0 instead. That is really not going to help your search engine ranking.

The proper way to do it is with mod_rewrite. Better still, as the site seems to be running Zen Cart, use the Zen Cart add-in for friendly URLs and make all your links pretty.

[singleWhiteMale]

MrV - there's nothing wrong with my solution (imho). Why would it affect search engine ranking? Using mod_rewrite would be worse as the same content would appear at two different urls, leading to a duplicate content penalty.

ZenCart SEO add-on might give 'prettier' urls but they wouldn't be the ones we want.

[GeekBoy]

mod_rewrite sends a 302 response by default (found but in a different location) so is actually more correct than a 301 (permanently moved - this is not the case as internal site links will link to the original,ugly URI).

Affecting SEO is a non-issue - the OP specified that the URI is to write on samples/inserts - Google currently has no way of crawling URIs written on physical packaging.....

[MrVibrating]

Google currently has no way of crawling URIs written on physical packaging.....

Haven't you heard of Google ScrapeApe?

Seriously, that's a good point. A 302 redirect would be fine for this,

[singleWhiteMale]

Hi DrHorrible

After a quick poke about in cPanel I've found that it's dead easy to do what you want. Even you could do it

Here's what you do:

Log in to cPanel with your admin password.
Scroll down to the 'Domains' section.
Click on 'Redirects'.
In the 'type' pulldown list, select 301 (yeh, ignore those guys. You can trust this face -> ).
In the next pulldown select 'bumfluffnappies.com'
In the box after the '/' type 'soapnuts' (without '').
In the 'redirects to' box type bumfluffnappies.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=11&chapter=0
The other settings can be left as they are.
Click the 'Add' button.
Done!

If you don't like it you can just delete the new setting and be back as you are now.