404 Traffic on Blog site
 

Hey all, just a quick question...if I have a 404 set up with .htaccess on my root web will any 404's be redirected the same way off my blog directory?

Thanks

Yes, unless you set up a separate .htaccess file for your blog dir. htaccess affects the dir they're in + all sub dirs.

Thank you Lemmy, I thoughts thats how it worked but I didnt know if it needed to be set stand alone.

One thing to keep in mind is that WordPress will either create or ask you to create an htaccess file in your blog directory if, for example, you wish to have 'search engine friendly' URLs for your blog pages. If you're using WP and/or do have another htaccess in your blog directory for some reason, just add your 404 statements to that htaccess too and you should be fine.

This is good to know, thanks. I don't mean to hijack this thread but I have a question about the 'search engine friendly' URL's. When my blog comes up on a search it doesn't seem to be listing the full URL, just up to /blog/. I have permalinks set up to use my post titles, title tags on all my pages and I've added a sitemap. Google seems to be indexing those but the full URL's are not being displayed when my site comes up in a searches. Any ideas why this may be happening? Maybe because the site is so new?

How are you searching for your site? Are you entering the domain name or are you searching by various keywords?

One this search I ran I saw a variety of URLs from your site.
http://www.google.com/search?q=+site...skinnyteen.net

I appreciate the WP tip Simon..Ill keep that fresh in mind when Im setting it up.

***

Also, see if the theme you're using has its own 404 page, maybe called 404.php in the theme files folder. If it does have its own 404 page, you can either make changes to the WP script (which could be a bad idea if you intend to upgrade regularly) or you can just swap whatever is in the 404.php file for some php code that sends the errors where you want them to go.

Keywords mostly. I'm still getting listed pretty well for my key words, but I thought it might help if the SE's were also listing the full titles of my pages. I think I figured out the problem though. I was running the title tags plug-in and all in one SEO together and I think they were conflicting with each other so I dropped title tags and am now just running all-in-one-seo. I'll see if that changes anything as the SE's index my site some more.

This is kind of a noob question for you guys. Do you just redirect your 404 hits to your main page or do you actually create a separate 404 page?

When you talk about using the htaccess to make your URL's more search engine friendly, what do you mean exactly? Do you mean this code here?


RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]


or were you referring to something else?

Yes, that's the code which WP will either insert into your htaccess file or ask you to insert if the file isn't writable by WP.

As far as creating your own 404 page versus sending 404s to your main page, you're probably fine sending surfers to your main page as long as it's a page they'll find interesting. Just remember that your 404 choice may be the only page some surfers will see. There's some good info on a few sites in the first search results below if you decide you want to use custom 404 pages with your blog.
http://www.google.com/search?q=404+page+for+blogs

HTH

ok thanks

Just a quick update. My listings seem to be getting more SE friendly after removing the title tags plug-in. It would make sense that title tags and All-in-one SEO conflict with each other and I'm pretty sure that was the problem. Just wanted to point that out in case anyone else was having the same problem. Just be sure to make sure your plug-ins aren't conflicting with each other.