# Solved: Redirect from Geocities



## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

I have found a new host, have the new pages working pretty well but am having trouble getting the geocities pages to redirect to the new site. I've put the code shown below into a few pages to try it out but it just goes to the same geocities page that was originally there, an archived version, I guess. The page should just have a small image of a moving van, blue background, the new address and the announcement I have moved, put there simply incase it won't redirect. This is really new to me so speak to me like a kindergartner please. 

The code I replaced the original head with:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

AquarianEssence Home

The address I'm trying to redirect is http://www.geocities.com/aquarianessence My new address is http://www.aquarianessence.com

Thanks for any help.

Connie


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

Have you tried an iFrame or Object frame code?

iFrame:
<iframe src ="html_intro.html" width="100%" height="300">

Object:

Use one of the above codes and place it on your new host, replace html_intro.htm with your geocities site and you should be done.


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

No, I haven't tried that. In fact, I had to go look up the definition to know exactly what you were talking about.  As I said, I'm a newbie in a lot of ways.

Ok, so you are saying I need to put this into the new site, not the old site, correct? The problem is, I just read that you can't use Iframes with XHTML or strict dtd. This is the format of my new index page.

What is really strange here is that when I put "" into the first page, the contact us page to experiement, it worked fine. I saw the recreated moving page for a brief second and thought it redirected to the new site. But apparantely it reverted to an archived version of geocities page. So, I'm wondering if this is because of something in the code that geocities puts in the pages.


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

Would you please send me the website which code this is on so I can take a look at it?

Edit: Oh I see the address. Give me a sec


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

I am using Google Chrome and your geocities site is directing to your other one just fine.


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Thanks for checking, Iworld. I'm using firefox and it doesn't work. I opened IE and the home page worked except the address bar still shows geocities. Should it be that way? The other pages I inserted this code didn't work though. So it looks like some browsers will work, others won't.


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

Aquarian said:


> Thanks for checking, Iworld. I'm using firefox and it doesn't work. I opened IE and the home page worked except the address bar still shows geocities. Should it be that way? The other pages I inserted this code didn't work though. So it looks like some browsers will work, others won't.


Here, take a look at this javascript redirect tutorial: http://www.tizag.com/javascriptT/javascriptredirect.php


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

This looks like a good idea, thanks. Can I combine the two like this?



*Prepare to be redirected!*

This page is a time delay redirect, please update your bookmarks to our new 
location!


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

You want the page to direct to two different websites?

Edit: I think this is the code you want:

*Prepare to be redirected!*

This page is a time delay redirect, please update your bookmarks to our new 
location!


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

No, I just liked the idea of the delay but I just noticed the php so I need to do some more reading to understand that line of the code. I was attempting to include both the redirect to address and the delay.


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

Aquarian said:


> No, I just liked the idea of the delay but I just noticed the php so I need to do some more reading to understand that line of the code. I was attempting to include both the redirect to address and the delay.


Oh no there is no php in this code. That line was just redirecting the page to a website with a php extention.

This is the code you want:

*Prepare to be redirected!*

This page is a time delay redirect, please update your bookmarks to our new 
location!


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## thingamajig (Mar 5, 2005)

The use of the html redirect is frowned upon by the search engines because of the way it has been abused over the years. You may be penalized.

I would use a 301 redirect by creating a file (if it doesn't exist) in your geocities directory named .htaccess and inserting the code


```
Redirect 301 /aquarianessence http://www.aquarianessence.com
```


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Ok, I'm laughing at myself. I read their address as part of the script. Thank you, that makes perfect sense. I'll try it.


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## thingamajig (Mar 5, 2005)

I missed the Javascript posts but I would also warn that the js methods are bad from the standpoint of search engine optimization.


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

What I would do (but don't reccomend it to Aquarian), is to give both websites a .php extension and then just simply put this code in his geocities page: <?php include("http://www.aquarianessence.com"); ?>

I don't think Geocities allows PHP, and even if they do then Aquarian should still learn basic PHP before doing it.


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

I think you are right that they don't allow php and you are also right I would have to learn it first. I had originally tried to do the .htaccess file. In fact I still have the instruction page up in my browser. But, I was having trouble getting the file to save without the .txt . Sometimes my vista machine does funny things. I'll try it again.


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## iworld (Nov 25, 2005)

Here, .htaccess file if you can change it. You may need to edit a few lines to the correct links. Not sure if I got everything. You need to edit the error pages, if you want them.

Options +FollowSymLinks 
RewriteEngine On

#Redirect other domain ext
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://www.aquarianessence.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://www.aquarianessence.com$
RewriteRule ^.*$ "http\:\/\/www\.geocities\.com\/aquarianessence\/" [R=301,L]

# Only apply to URLs on this domain
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?geocities.com/aquarianessence$

# Don't apply to URLs that go to existing files or folders.
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

#Redirect index.php
# RewriteRule ^index.html /index.html

# Error Pages
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.error_page.php
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.error_page.php
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.error_page.php
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.error_page.php
<Files 403.shtml>
order allow,deny
allow from all
</Files>


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Well, third time was the charm for getting my machine to allow saving .htaccess as all files, without the .txt. But, when I uploaded it into geocities, it rejected it as an invalid file so must be, they don't allow them. So, I'll need to use the other options.


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## thingamajig (Mar 5, 2005)

So, GeoCities is closing in October. Here are the instructions from their site:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/geocities/close/close-13.html


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Yes, that's right. Notice they give no way for us to redirect if we aren't paying them as our host. Good business tactic. I've noticed since Att merged with yahoo their services have been diminishing quickly and lately I've been noticing lagging and disconnections during the time they've been pressuring us to switch from dsl to the fiber optics/tv/phone package.

Anyway, I just tried to use this code

<?php
header( 'Location: http://www.aquarianessence.com/aboutus.html' ) ;
?>

after a 15 minute crash course to see what would happen and it was nothing but a blank page so php won't work at geocities either. I will stick with what I have, send notice to all my mailing list and all the sites I've seen have my address listed to do a change of address by hand and hope the search engines won't beat me up simply because geocities has so many barriers in place. I had to laugh when I put a page from there into W3C to be validated. Over 30 errors and all belonged to geocities, not my code.

Thanks for your help.


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## thingamajig (Mar 5, 2005)

It does seem like bad form. Since it appears your old URL will go away anyway without allowing you a 301, I see no reason not to just use js for the redirect. You might want to display a message that politely explains the situation and your new URL with a delay for reading and a "visit new page now" link.


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

Thanks. I'll get a good nights sleep after a long day and tackle this in the morning. There are quite a few pages there. I hope this thread will be of help to others that will need to do the same. There are a lot of sites about to be deleted in a few months.

Thanks again.


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

One last thing...I found out my site has been archived, as many others have so even if the site is gone my 2006 and 2007 version is still accessible. If anyone want's to check for theirs, or submit it for archiving, the search page is here http://www.archive.org/web/geocities.php


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## Aquarian (Apr 24, 2005)

I marked this thread solved but couldn't use the best solutions, due to geocities set up. Since it wasn't possible to go the ideal route I decided to just put a 301 message at the top with a link to the new address, then emailed everyone that has links to my page or is on my mailing list. I thought this would be better than doing something that the search engines would like less. If anyone has a better idea, I'll be glad to hear it.

Thanks all.


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