Many of my pages can be accessed at URLs like:

        www.example.com/something/widgets.htm
   &
        www.example.com/something/widgets

and Google Webmaster tools is warning me of duplicate meta-descriptions
and titles for those "two" pages.

My preference is for the latter form; can I add something to my
.htaccess file to the effect that:

        *.htm redirects as "301" to *


Similarly, what about:

        www.example.com/something/index.htm
   &
        www.example.com/something/
   &
        www.example.com/something

using:

        */index.htm redirects as "301" to *
   &
        */ redirects as "301" to *

-- 
Andy Mabbett
            Says  "NO! to compulsory UK ID Cards":  <http://www.no2id.net/>
            and:  "Free Our Data":  <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk>
                   (both also on Facebook)

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Andy Mabbett wrote:

> Many of my pages can be accessed at URLs like:
>         www.example.com/something/widgets.htm
>         www.example.com/something/widgets
>
> My preference is for the latter form;

  DefaultType         text/html
  AddDefaultCharset   utf-8
 #AddDefaultCharset   iso-8859-1
  Options             -Multiviews

Name your file just "widgets" without any extension.

> Similarly, what about:
>         www.example.com/something/index.htm
>         www.example.com/something/

  DirectoryIndex     secretname

Rename "index.htm" to "secretname".

>         www.example.com/something

That's done by the server automatically.

-- 
In memoriam Alan J. Flavell
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=author:Alan.J.Flavell

Andreas Prilop  wrote:
>  DefaultType         text/html
>  Options             -Multiviews

> Name your file just "widgets" without any extension.

Better than that, if you're using apache and you get the configuration
right, you can reference any item (text file, graphic, flash,...) without
its extension, but continue to name it sensibly.

Consider map.html and map.jpg. You could reference http://blah.../map
which in turn contained an <img src="map">. It's particularly great
for multi-language sites where the browser and server negotiate for a
preferred language (you'd have map.en.html, map.fr.html, map.de.html...)

Chris

In message , Chris Davies
 writes

>Andreas Prilop  wrote:
>>  DefaultType         text/html
>>  Options             -Multiviews
>
>> Name your file just "widgets" without any extension.
>
>Better than that, if you're using apache and you get the configuration
>right, you can reference any item (text file, graphic, flash,...)
>without its extension, but continue to name it sensibly.

Which was my question: how do I do that?

-- 
Andy Mabbett
            Says  "NO! to compulsory UK ID Cards":  <http://www.no2id.net/>
            and:  "Free Our Data":  <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk>
                   (both also on Facebook)

In message , Chris Davies
 writes
>Better than that, if you're using apache and you get the configuration
>right, you can reference any item (text file, graphic, flash,...)
>without its extension, but continue to name it sensibly.

Andy Mabbett  wrote:
> Which was my question: how do I do that?

Include mod_alias, mod_include, mod_negotiation. Then change or add
these lines (I have them in conf.d/local on my Debian box):

AddLanguage en-GB .en-GB
AddLanguage en-US .en-US

LanguagePriority en-GB en-US en fr ...
ForceLanguagePriority Prefer Fallback


Then name your HTML files, e.g. index.en-gb.html and index.fr.html, and
your images, e.g. picture.en-gb.jpg and picture.fr.jpg. Ensure you refer
to the files without any extension.

You might have to add plain "index" to your DirectoryIndex list - I
can't confirm this right now.

Chris