General Discussions

**davlam** · 03-29-2006, 05:43 PM

Hi,

sorry that this is in the wrong place but i'm not sure where to put it.

I have my own home server. Running on a win xp pro pc running latest apache,php,mysql,perl,imagemagik.

With web site and forum running on it.

I have a domain name www.dlamarra.co.uk which was purchased from 123.reg and i use their url forwarding to send it to my static ip address and port forward through my router to the server.

I have a few questions.

1. google has problems getting past the www.dlamarra.co.uk it only ever sees 1 page on the site. Submitting my ip address returns much more. Is this because of the url forwarding ? Is there anything i can do about it. Also when members acess my sites via that address the url never changes as they surf the sites. It never points to the full path of the page/topic they are reading so they cannot cut and paste the link.

2. i was submitting my site to siteadvisor and i get the following message..

Quote:

It appears that the Web site dlamarra.co.uk is returning an HTTP 200 status response code in the header of 404 pages.

We cannot verify a Web site that is configured this way because it allows anyone to verify themselves as the owner of your site. Please update your Web site server configuration to return 404 status codes in the headers for pages that do not exist. Once your site is configured this way then you can return and request a file name verification.

what does this mean and how do i fix it ?

Is there any other alternative for me other than this url forwarding service provided by 123-reg. I will be buying a new domain name soon.

3. How can i get better search engine submissions?

hope you can help,

thanks,

dave

**neroux** · 03-29-2006, 06:08 PM

This URL forwarding is done by cloaking your actual site within a frameset (which causes also this static URL). Although I wouldnt consider it as problematic for search engines it might be an issue. Having a site configuration which would load your site directly would be definitely better. Regarding the error message you got, I am not sure what it is referring to.

**davlam** · 03-29-2006, 06:13 PM

hiya,

thanks for the reply..

I think the error is down to this url forwarding as well. I put in my ip addy directly to siteadvisor and it didn't come up with that error.

However it did throw up another which i've written to them about.

**neroux** · 03-29-2006, 06:23 PM

Are you referring to siteadvisor.com?

I assume the message means that when a non-existing resource is requested, the HTTP code 200 is returned instead of 404. This is caused because the URL forwarder does and cannot check whether a resource exists and simply returns the frameset along with the code 200 and passes the requested resource to the actual site, which then returns the code 404.

**neroux** · 03-29-2006, 06:25 PM

Does 123-reg also offer DNS management?

**davlam** · 03-29-2006, 06:34 PM

yes its siteadvisor.com

there is an option in my domain cpanel to manage dns but it's all greek to me.

these are the options in the cpanel

Quote:

Manage My Blog
Upgrade to Web Hosting
Web Forwarding
E-mail forwarding
Manage DNS
Change Nameservers
Change IPS Tag
Modify Contact Details
WHOIS Opt out
Holding Page Wizard
Transfer Domain to another 123-reg user
Submit Site to 10 Search Engines - FREE
Submit Site to 400 Search Engines
Display or Print an Invoice

**neroux** · 03-29-2006, 06:42 PM

Basically you would need create an A record for dlamarra.co.uk which points to 83.67.71.111 and then the CNAME "www" which points to "dlamarra.co.uk".

**davlam** · 03-29-2006, 06:51 PM

ok can do, but can you explain what that will do for me please. this is new to me.

remembering that it's my home server and 83.67.71.111 is my internet ip addy.

**neroux** · 03-29-2006, 06:57 PM

It will map your domain directly to your home server without any URL forwarders and similar. In the long run however you might want to consider to host your site externally, except you have a particular reason to host it inhouse.

**davlam** · 03-29-2006, 08:44 PM

so that is better then ? excluding the url forwarding from the equation. yea ..

the reason i host it from home is that it's free. I have unlimited bandwidth on my isp account and soon to be upgraded to 10meg down 1 meg up.

And i have 160 gig hd in the machine. It's a photography site so pics eat up space but there is plenty.

**Minaki** · 03-30-2006, 03:16 AM

You'll probably find that even with 1meg upstream, if you get more than a few visitors it'll slow down quite a bit. Home broadband connection aren't designed to run web server off, and it's usually against ISP's T's & C's.

You may also find that your IP changes in the future, meaning your site will be unavailable. You can use dynamic DNS services such as no-ip to get around that.

**davlam** · 03-30-2006, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neroux

It will map your domain directly to your home server without any URL forwarders and similar. In the long run however you might want to consider to host your site externally, except you have a particular reason to host it inhouse.

I did that change to the dns you mentioned.

@ A 83.67.71.111
www CNAME dlamarra.co.uk

and deleted the 2 entries pointing at 195.224.48.90 that were in those fields.

BUT when i switched off web/url forwarding i got the holding page from 123-reg instead of my homepage.

**neroux** · 03-30-2006, 06:17 PM

Well, I guess this is just a DNS propagation issue. The site loads fine.

**davlam** · 03-30-2006, 06:32 PM

errr...yea it will do (oops) i put it back onto web forwarding.

It does say on the web forwarding page that if i switch it off then it'll go to a holding page. But that might be a statement assuming that i wouldn't alter the dns.
SHould i switch it off and see if it comes through. But i don't want the site down for a long time.

in the dns options both the A and CName were at 195.224.48.90 i deleted them and added my stuff.

**davlam** · 03-30-2006, 08:16 PM

just thought i'd add. thanks to neroux....

Now that the dns has propagated through i'm now getting the full path from dlamarra.co.uk to the pages within the site. Exactly what i needed..

brilliant..

thanks again......

**neroux** · 03-31-2006, 05:22 AM

You are welcome

.