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Steve P
Starting Member

USA
8 Posts

Posted - August 21 2009 :  13:33:09  Show Profile  Visit Steve P's Homepage  Reply with Quote
How can I prevent my site from being indexed on the major search engines?

We are using VP-ASP to create an online catalog for a customer that will only be accessible to their employees and we would prefer that it not be listed on internet search engines.

devshb
Senior Member

United Kingdom
1904 Posts

Posted - August 21 2009 :  18:48:26  Show Profile  Visit devshb's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I'd say the best way to do that would be via the hosting panel rather than through the code, ie that you have 2 levels of logins, one at site level which has the same userid/pwd company-wide just to access the site/domain itself (done via secure-folder settings in your hosting control panel), and the other level being the normal customer logins.

I mean, you can flip a vpasp config switch to only allow logged-in customers to view the category/product data, but if you want the entire site to not be indexed then the only way to enforce it would be to use secure folders on the domain. You could, if you wanted, put an extra check in shop$db.asp to say that if someone's not logged in then they can't access any asp files (apart from the login screen itself obviously) but that wouldn't stop the search engines from finding the site and possibly trawling non-protected html files etc.

You can create robot files to try and stop search engines from listing things, but if it's not using secure folders then it'll inevitably end up finding its way onto the search engines in the end because someone's bound to post some kind of link to it somewhere on another domain that's already public (eg on a forum or something)

Most people would normally save their secure-browsing userid/pwd the first time they're prompted to enter it, so they'd only normally need to enter it once unless they explicitly clear out all their browser accounts.

Protecting html files (and images etc) is the main point; no matter what you do with vpasp, html files and images etc won't be protected from public viewing unless you use something like secure folders. If you're not worried about html files or images being available to the public, and only want to protect the asp files then that's easier and you wouldn't need secure-folders.

Simon Barnaby
Developer
[email protected]
www.BigYellowZone.com
Web Design, Online Marketing and VPASP addons

Edited by - devshb on August 21 2009 18:53:52
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Peter
VP-CART New User

125 Posts

Posted - August 21 2009 :  20:48:34  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Does it matter if a non employee is able access the site if they somehow do find the URL?

If not, I'd just put a rule in a robots.txt file or add the following in shoppage_header.htm:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

All the major search engines should obey this and not list the relevant pages.

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Steve P
Starting Member

USA
8 Posts

Posted - September 08 2009 :  15:31:43  Show Profile  Visit Steve P's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I implemented the meta tag and the robots.txt file and that seems to have done the trick. Thanks
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tonymatell
Starting Member

1 Posts

Posted - November 21 2009 :  20:42:05  Show Profile  Visit tonymatell's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Yes creating robots.txt and indecating nofollow should do the trick...I use this on some of my sites.


_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Tony Matell
http://www.babyphon-babyphone.de




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bobbyflint84
Starting Member

1 Posts

Posted - February 01 2010 :  22:08:23  Show Profile  Visit bobbyflint84's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Tony is right use robot.txt and indicate


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marrydavidson101
Starting Member

1 Posts

Posted - April 17 2010 :  05:53:02  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I tried using tmp_frontpage today and got the following error messages:

Field catalogid not in database
Field cprice not in database
Field cimageurl not in database
Field cdescription not in database
Field retailprice not in database
Field catalogid not in database

It's like it isn't finding the product table in the database, but I'm not certain where to look from here.

Marry
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diegomilito
VP-CART Expert

Argentina
779 Posts

Posted - April 22 2010 :  23:17:12  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
This usually indicates that the value in HTML code for the description field contains "[" and/or "]" characters. Unfortunately these characters cannot be exist as this is a reserved characters in VP-ASP I think.

Please change these characters with "(" and ")".

Milito.
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