dw_suggestions | Automatically redirect .htm to .html

Entry tags:

Automatically redirect .htm to .html

Title:
Automatically redirect .htm to .html

Area:
entries

Summary:
I don't know how much bandwidth or work it would take, but maybe you could consider changing or redirecting .htm urls on dreamwidth to .html, bypassing the 404 page. Or, maybe on the 404 page include a note that if the user got there following a url that ends in .htm, they should change it to .html.

Description:
That's pretty much it.

Poll #8904 Automatically redirect .htm to .html

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 93

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
73 (78.5%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (3.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (1.1%)

(I have no opinion)
16 (17.2%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thank you for making this suggestion! *goes and checks that off on the to-do list*

I would suggest just redirecting, because there is nowhere on DW that I know of that actually uses .htm, so it will never work; the only viable reason that I could see (aside from technical pain-in-the-neck) would be if some pages were .htm and some were .html, but since they're not...

---

From my notes on the to-do list:

This seems like it should be relatively low-energy to maintain, and may well be low-effort for someone with server administration experience to implement. It does introduce the opportunity for new and exciting configuration errors.

I don't think that anyone deliberately uses the .htm links in order to foil spiders, but if they did, this would screw that up.

Edited 2011-12-27 08:15 (UTC)

Why?

As

azurelunatic notes, there are no .htm urls here to begin with.
DreamWidth is a .html-only site.
The 404 page is there for a reason.

I don't think this could be very useful.

/just sayin'

It's a really common mistake when copying and pasting, which is why I think it would be very useful.

Hear, hear! /someone who does it far too often and can't understand why the URL they copypasted doesn't work...

I don't think this could be very useful.

I do. I've copied/pasted wrong more'n once, and I've accidentally deleted too much when stripping out ?style= or similar when linking-having a link ending .htm that's gone out to Twitter, Delicious etc normally having hit a link shortener, etc is annoying to me, readers and those I link to.

My with-changes is that I think it might work better to have a "No pages on this site end in .htm - if the link you followed ended in .htm, change that to .html" notice than a redirect, both from an "easier to do" perspective and because there'd be a chance that the person getting that notice could go back to whomever had the invalid link and have em fix the link. (And, I guess, if anyone intentionally uses the .htm link for some weird reason it'd let them keep doing so, but I find it hard to imagine anyone doing that.)

On the other hand, it'd be annoying to see if it was a copying error, but in my experience I get the 404 page more often from someone else's miscopied link than from my truncated copying.

I think it might work better to have a "No pages on this site end in .htm - if the link you followed ended in .htm, change that to .html" notice

See, I think the opposite as I know a large number of people have no idea what the addressbar is or how to use/amend it.