.htaccess with freenetname hosting

[#1]

Hi

I'm new to this forum but have had a site hosted by freenetname/madasafish/plusnet for years.

I'm updating my site www.mydomain.co.uk which has gone well so thought I'd try directing any Error 404 page not found errors to my index page in case my update caused some missing pages.

I've read up about using the .htaccess file and I've tried the simple three line file below but without success:

ErrorDocument 403 /index.htm
ErrorDocument 404 /index.htm
ErrorDocument 500 /index.htm

I uploaded this file to the public_html folder via ftp which also contains the index.htm file I want to redirect to.

Is this possible with my current hosting set up?  If so, any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

Many thanks

[#2]

Hi guys

Is anyone able to help me with this, or at least confirm whether or not an .htaccess file would work with my site?

Many thanks

[#3]

---

@Fishsound wrote:

I've read up about using the .htaccess file and I've tried the simple three line file below but without success:

ErrorDocument 403 /index.htm
ErrorDocument 404 /index.htm
ErrorDocument 500 /index.htm

I uploaded this file to the public_html folder via ftp which also contains the index.htm file I want to redirect to.

---

Hi @Fishsound , welcome to the forum

There are many here who know more about .htaccess than I do, but this is the format I used for the first website I built (happychild.org.uk):

errordocument 404 full-http-address-of-your-domain/index.htm
errordocument 500 full-http-address-of-your-domain/index.htm

... so, for example, yours might say

errordocument 404 http://www.fishsoundwebsite.com/index.htm  (ignore the link/underline added by the forum software)

The file is (usually) created as htaccess.txt, then after upload is modified to .htaccess

If .htaccess is intended to operate for your whole website, it needs to be in the 'root' directory (the first one you get to after clicking on htdocs).

I'm not familiar with the freenetname/madasafish set-up but would guess that public_html is equivalent to htdocs, maybe.

I don't see why an .htaccess file shouldn't work for freenetname/madasafish, but some hosting services disable use of .htaccess, as I discovered when uploading such a file to freeola, years back, which rendered the whole http://www.supercoolzone.com site inaccessible until it was removed.  So a learning curve 😕

If you manage to get .htaccess working in the root directory, you can use different diverts for inner directories by setting up .htaccess files separately in those directories.

HTH

.

[#4]

Have you tried Google ?  “.htaccess errordocument”  Plenty of instructions available.

Edit : good advise from @Penny 

[#5]

Many thanks for the reply.

I've tried a couple of variations of .htaccess commands such as:

    errordocument 404 http://www.fishsoundwebsite.co.uk/index.htm

and
    errordocument 404 "Oops! We can't find that pesky file. Sorry."

all without success.

Using FileZilla ftp transfer, I've put the .htaccess file in the public_html folder having created it in Notepad and removing the .txt file extension.

I've been testing it by trying to access a page on my site which does not exist and every time I get:

  "Not Found

      The requested URL was not found on this server."

with the page title "404 Not Found".

It would good if someone could confirm whether or not a freenetname hosted website can use .htaccess.

Many thanks

[#6]

In .htaccess  type  :  ErrorDocument 404 /index.htm  

This should  redirect requests to non-existant pages to /index.htm

[#7]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.  I used that command in my original .htaccess file and in subsequent tries but without any success.

I've looked at a number of sites thrown up by Google searches and all seem to suggest that my file command(s) are correct, it just is not working, hence my concern that a site originally hosted by freenetname may not allow the use of .htaccess.

If it does, it would be useful to hear from someone who has successfully used it on a freenetname hosted site.

Thanks