If I want to load the homepage of https://medium.com/ by typing the exact index.html file address into my browser, how would I do that? Or is it not possible?
https://medium.com/index.html gives me a 404 error. Also curious how I would do this more broadly with any webpage for which my browser is displaying a url that does not end in .html.
Common static websites hosted just as files somewhere usually have an index.html document which can be resolved either directly or is normally loaded when no particular document is specified so https://example.com/ and https://example.com/index.html both work.
But this is not how most webs work. Pages can be dynamically generated server side, you just send a request to the server and if the path matches some server operation it will create a response for you. Unless https://example.com/ returns documents from a directory using something classic like the Apache Web Server set to serve static files from a directory, it won't work.
There is no general way to know what, if any, URLs for a given website resolve to duplicates of the homepage (or any other page).
Dynamically generated sites, in particular, tend not to have alternative URLs for pages.
Related
I currently have a simple website, hosted on github pages with a file structured in hierarchical directories as shown below:
/foobar.com
/css
/js
/images
/html
/news
/news_content
fizz.html
buzz.html
news.html
about.html
contact.html
index.html
However, when I am on the buzz webpage for example, this has resulted in the URL to become:
https://foobar.com/html/news/news_content/buzz.html
Is there a way to change this URL so that it doesn't show all the folder directories and instead, just the file itself i.e. https://foobar.com/buzz.html as I don't want to separate all the individual HTML files into separate folders?
Yes, you can change the URL to be more user-friendly by using server-side URL rewriting or client-side JavaScript.
For server-side URL rewriting, you'll need to use a web server such as Apache or Nginx and configure it to rewrite the URLs. You can find more information on how to do this for Apache or Nginx by searching for "URL rewriting" on their websites or forums.
For client-side URL rewriting, you can use JavaScript to manipulate the URL shown in the browser's address bar. However, this method may not be ideal for search engines or users who have JavaScript disabled.
If you are using GitHub Pages to host your website, you might be able to achieve URL rewriting by using Jekyll. Jekyll is a static site generator that supports URL rewriting and can be used in combination with GitHub Pages to host your website. You can find more information on how to do this by searching for "Jekyll URL rewriting."
How a URL is resolved to a resource depends on the HTTP server and/or the server side programming language you are using.
Github Pages provides no features that allow anything other than a direct reflection of the directory layout in the URL.
The closest you could come would be to write a program that transformed the input (the file structure you want to work with) into the file structure that Github Pages will express as the URLs you desire (and then run it as a build step that takes the pages out of your working branch and into your gh-pages branch; possibly you could use actions to do this).
While debugging my site, I have noticed a weird thing happening. Lets say the html file has a hyperlink like so:
This hyperlink uses "../" to take you back one directory
If I debug my own site in vscode and use chrome, if I click this, it gives me a weird page that says "Index of /Users/myusername/code/public_html/aboutme/" and shows all of the files in that directory. But then when I upload the files to my host, everything works just fine. Why is this? I suspect it may have to do with the way that "index.html" works.
A typical configuration for an HTTP server which is serving static files (i.e. mapping URLs directly onto files on the filesystem) is that if the URL maps onto a directory then to look for a file named index.html (or similar) and response with that.
For example, when using Apache HTTPD, this is handled by the DirectoryIndex directive.
When dealing with a file:/// scheme URL then there is no HTTP server which can do that mapping and the code internal to browsers which handles file:/// scheme URLs doesn't do it either.
When a website doesn't have an index.html file, the navigator displays an auto generated page right ?
Here is an example of what I mean.
This page is very handful to explore a website, but sadly it is only displayed when there is no index.html page.
Is it possible to access such a page on a website, even though index.html exists in the folder ?
I'm using Opera, but I have tried other navigators and none of the common ones seems to do what I want ^^
Thanks for reading
This is not an auto generated page. It is directory browsing of server which can be enabled/disabled through server control panel (or using .htaccess in linux servers).
When you have default document (like index.html) in a folder, the server servs the default document instead of directory browsing. So if you want to let directory browsing when you have index.html, you have to clear the index.hmtl from the list of default documents. This can be done using IIS settings (if you have access to server) or through hosting control panel in website settings (in shared hostings) (or by direct editing of web.config or .htaccess)
the navigator displays an auto generated page
No. This has nothing to do with the browser. The browser displays whatever the server returns. Nothing more, nothing less.
What you're seeing on that link is from the Apache web server. That web server is configured to (and can be configured not to) return a generated directory listing when no default response can be determined.
The "default response" might be index.html, or default.html, or literally anything that the web server is configured to look for by default. (Those are just, well, the common defaults.)
In many modern web applications the concept of a "page" doesn't even really mean the same thing, because things like MVC frameworks don't just browse directories for .html files but instead examine requested routes and generate responses from code.
Is it possible to access such a page on a website, eventho index.html exist in the folder ?
No. Because that "page" doesn't exist. The web server returned that to you because it was configured to. If it's not configured to then that data doesn't exist.
How do I find the filename of an website I am inspecting with Firebug? As example when I look on http://example.org/ I can view inspect the Element, I see the whole html structure but I didn`t find the filename. I am searching for index.html or something in that way. Maybe this is an analog question, but I am not sure, because he/she is working with php. LINK
I know there are some solutions with Dreamweaver or other tools but I am searching for an easy way to figure that out with Firebug or an free Browser Add-On. I Hope you have a solution for that.
The URL you entered is the one that usually returns the main HTML contents. Though on most pages nowadays the HTML is altered using JavaScript. Also, pages are very often dynamically generated on the server.
So, in most cases there is no static .html file.
For what it's worth, you can see all network requests and their responses within Firebug's Net panel.
Note that the URL path doesn't necessarily reflect a file path on the server's file system. It is depending on the server configuration, where a specific URL maps to in the file system. The simplest example is the index file that is automatically called when a domain is accessed. In the case of http://example.org the server automatically loads a file index.html in the file system, for example.
So, in order to get the file name on the file system, you need to either check the server configuration or the related access logs.
I've uploaded several files to my server and it's really quite baffling. The home page is saved as index.html, and when I type in the URL of said page it miraculously, and quite successfully shows the right page. What about my other pages? I have linked to them from the home page with the following code:
About Us
How does my html file, presumably called about.html, supposed to know that its URL is "http://www.example.com/about/"? I am dubbing this "The Unanswered Question" because I have looked at numerous examples of metadata and there is nothing about specifying the URL of a page.
It depends on what type of server you are running.
Static web servers
If it is the simplest kind of static file server with no URL aliasing or rewriting then URLs will map directly to files:
If your "web root" was /home/youruser/www/, then that means:
http://www.example.com -> /home/youruser/www/
And any paths (everything after the domain name) translate directly to paths under that web root:
http://www.example.com/about.html -> /home/youruser/www/about.html
Usually web servers will look automatically for an "index.html" file if no file is specified (i.e. the URL ends in a /):
http://www.example.com/ -> /home/youruser/www/index.html
http://www.example.com/about/ -> /home/youruser/www/about/index.html
In Apache, the filename searched for is configurable with the DirectoryIndex directive:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.txt /cgi-bin/index.pl
That means that every request to a path that ends in a / (and to add yet another rule, under some common settings it will automatically append a / if the path is the name of a directory, for example 'about'):
http://www.example.com/ -> /home/youruser/www/index.html
-> or /home/youruser/www/index.txt
-> or /home/youruser/www/cgi-bin/index.pl
Web servers with path interpretation
There are too many different types of servers which perform this functionality to list them all, but the basic idea is that a request to the server is captured by a program and then the program decides what to output based on the path.
For example, a program might perform different routes for basic matching rules:
*.(gif|jpg|css|js) -> look for and return the file from /home/user/static
blog/* -> send to a "blog" program to generate the resulting page
using a combination of templates and database resources
Examples include:
Python
Java Servlets
Apache mod_rewrites (used by Wordpress, etc.)
Links in HTML pages
Finally, the links in the HTML pages just change the URL of the location bar. The behavior of an HTML link is the same regardless of what exists on the server. And the server, in turn, only responds to HTTP requests and only produces resources (HTML, images, CSS, JavaScript, etc.), which your browser consumes. The server only serves those resources and does not have any special behavioral link with them.
Absolute URLs are those that start with a scheme (such as http: as you have done). The whole content of the location bar will be replaced with this when the user clicks the link.
Domain relative URLs are those that start with a forward slash (/). Everything after the domain name will be replaced with the contents of this link.
Relative URLs are everything else. Everything after the last directory (/) in the URL will be replaced with the contents of this link.
Examples:
My page on "mydomain.com" can link to your site using the Example.com about just as you have done.
If I change my links to about then it will link to mydomain.com instead.
An answer your question
How does my html file, presumably called about.html, supposed to know that its URL is "http://www.example.com/about/"?
First, the file itself has no idea what its URL is. Unless:
the HTML was dynamically generated using a program. Most server-side languages provide a way to get this.
after the page is served, client-side scripts can also detect the current URL
Second, if the URL is /about and the file is actually about.html then you probably have some kind of rewriting going on. Remember that paths, in their simplest, are literal translations and /about is not the same as about.html.
Just use /about.html to link to the page
Theoretically, it's better for URLs in your documents to be relative, so that you don't have to change them in the event you change the domain or the files location.
For example, if you move it from localhost to your hosted server.
In your example, instead of www.example.com/about.html use /about.html.
Given the link above you would need a about page named index.html located in a directory named about for your example to work. That is however not common practice.
I'm a bit confused, but here is some information. Any file named "index" is the default display page for any directory(folder) when trying to view that directory.
All files in a folder are always relative to that directory. So if your link is in a file, within a different directory, then you must type in that directory along with the file. If it is the same directory, then there is no need to type in that directory, just the file name.
about.html doesn't know what it's URL is, its the index.html file that calls your about.html file.
When you're in any given directory, linking to other pages within that directory is done via a simple relative link:
About Us
Moving up a directory, assuming you're in a sub folder (users) perhaps you can use the .. operator to navigate up one directory:
About Us
In your case your about page is in the same directory as the page you're linking from so it just goes to the right page.
Additionally (and I think this may be what you're asking) if you have:
about.html
about.php
about.phtml
about.jpg
for example, and you visit http://www.yoursite.com/about it will automatically bring up the html page and the other pages should be referenced explicitly somewhere if you want them to be used.