.htaccess File Is It Good Or Bad?

Currently I'm building my X-Cart based ecommerce site and I've become concerned with their use of "home.php" as the default home page. I've been advised I'll need to modify the .htaccess file to change the default/index page to "home.php".

Will this process affect my rankings and if so how and why? Also what do you suggest I do to avoid this issue? Perhaps a static html index.htm page directing you to the X-Cart pages?

.htaccess is perfectly fine to use!

Here is how to do what you mentioned (in case you don't know how).

Open .htaccess in your root directory and add this line:



That's it! If you do not have the .htaccess file, you can simply create it. Keep in mind that some FTP clients do not show hidden files, so you may have it allready. If you need to create it, and use windows, you cannot have a file with no prefix (something before the period), so just create htaccess.txt, type in that line, upload, and rename to .htaccess

Now, if you previously were using another file name for the index (like index.php, index.htm.. whatever) you may want to also add this:



where index.htm is your old index.. This way if anyone is linking to you with the old file name, it will simply re-direct them (in a SEO friendly way).

A rose by any other name.....

You could always change the file name - update the navigation ssytem and check there are no refference in any files to it (just use a batch find a replace).
Personaly though I would say that a shopping cart system would not be aimed at SEO and you would be better of doing a targetted page as your index page and then directly linking it to the home.php page.

the new version of xcart has new search engine friendly pages with mod_rewrite implemented. I would suggest using it (I AM NOT AFFILIATED WITH XCART , I just like it...!! Optimize it well and you would have a high traffic high sales xcart store !!

What about

DirectoryIndex my-top-keyword.php

Do you think, it would be appreciated in ranking ?

Xaver

.htaccess files are very powerful. It's the sure proof way to navigate your users without pesty redirects the engines do not like.

one thing i forgot to mention....you can use the .htaccess file to show different pages for certain visitors. We have used it to take certain customers directly to the login page bypassing the general content.