I recall not too long ago when you had "crumb" problems and had to redo all your websites. Well, now it's my turn.
Back then Google did send me a nasty-gram saying they don't like what's on the home page for the portal. Basically I ignored them because one of their citations was obviously false. The meta data they were complaining was missing was clearly in place where it should be. The font size was per their recommendations and the buttons were far enough apart so that I could press them on my clever phone's browser. So, to hell with Google.
Now they tell me my site is in danger of not being indexed because there is no ID for the crumbs. Of course there is no ID. I am not using crumbs, or I should say I was not using them. That home page is about as simple as web pages can be. Adding crumbs to existing links for exactly the same thing didn't make sense. Still doesn't. The page also would not pass their validation machine. The issue there has to do with a link in one of the archive sites. They claim one of the forums is a dead link. First of all they have no justification for trying to validate that site. It's separate and apart from this one. All of them are different in fact. But, I do have links to all the sites I maintain on that home page. So, now that Google is changing the way they search and index things, they expect me to kow tow to their asinine demands.
I can't complain too loudly because indeed more than half the world has gone mobile. So, I made that home page mobile friendly. It was pretty friendly to begin with, other than the image not resizing exactly right. But now that is fixed and I put crumbs at the top. As far as I'm concerned it all looks ugly compared to the old way, but we do get 5 clicks in any given month. I would not want to lose that, now would I ?
I don't know what to do about the forum they can't find. The URL does not exist in the form they are rejecting it. They are including the root directory in the URL and I have no idea how or why they are doing it that way. Nobody in the whole universe sees that root directory in their browser and I went to some pains in my robot.txt file to keep them out. I can navigate to the link in question from six different directions. Everything on the page works as expected. They spell out the line of code with the invalid URL, but guess what. It's not part of the base code for the page. It might be a temporary thing that PHP does to generate the page, but there are two dozen other links on that page that Google has no problem with. So, I don't get it.
I'm guessing Goog'le using LINUX to crawl the web. GRRRRrrrr
Crumbs
Re: Crumbs
My problem was not directly related to the breadcrumbs as much as how they were formatted.
When I changed from html to XHTML I still had a few pages as transitional I never got back to redoing.
Breadcrumbs had to be formatted a different way in XHTML as they were in HTML.
It was a simple job to change the line of code for the breadcrumb links.
As long as they point to a valid URL, which will appear at the bottom of the page if you scroll over it, you are home free.
Although I just had to change some things last month, and add some new pages, I've already forgotten what things I had to change to appease not only Google Search, but also my Host provider.
As I said before, every page had to have a link that would get you back to the Index.html page. But you do not have to DIRECTLY be able to get to a page from the index.html page, it can be a series of steps to get there.
We now have unconnected storage space, 50 gigs worth, where we can put things for storage, but no outside links.
They have another folder that uses part of your storage space where you can store things you link to from other websites.
Such as an images file. But you can also link to live pages images rather than waste your storage space.
As long as a page is accessible via the Index.html page or through a page that is, it is considered part of my unlimited storage space, plus you have to be able to go backwards back to the index.html page from it, thus the reason for breadcrumbs going back to home on nested pages not directly accessed from the index page.
I guess they have programs running that keep check on all their clients pages, hi hi.
As an aside, I do get a notice every once in a while that I've not made any changes to my web site, which causes the web crawlers to bypass me more often and I may lose my ranking on the search engines. So I should make some changes soon.
When I changed from html to XHTML I still had a few pages as transitional I never got back to redoing.
Breadcrumbs had to be formatted a different way in XHTML as they were in HTML.
It was a simple job to change the line of code for the breadcrumb links.
As long as they point to a valid URL, which will appear at the bottom of the page if you scroll over it, you are home free.
Although I just had to change some things last month, and add some new pages, I've already forgotten what things I had to change to appease not only Google Search, but also my Host provider.
As I said before, every page had to have a link that would get you back to the Index.html page. But you do not have to DIRECTLY be able to get to a page from the index.html page, it can be a series of steps to get there.
We now have unconnected storage space, 50 gigs worth, where we can put things for storage, but no outside links.
They have another folder that uses part of your storage space where you can store things you link to from other websites.
Such as an images file. But you can also link to live pages images rather than waste your storage space.
As long as a page is accessible via the Index.html page or through a page that is, it is considered part of my unlimited storage space, plus you have to be able to go backwards back to the index.html page from it, thus the reason for breadcrumbs going back to home on nested pages not directly accessed from the index page.
I guess they have programs running that keep check on all their clients pages, hi hi.
As an aside, I do get a notice every once in a while that I've not made any changes to my web site, which causes the web crawlers to bypass me more often and I may lose my ranking on the search engines. So I should make some changes soon.
Re: Crumbs
You previously have talked about the in house rules your hosting service imposes on you. My response to that is they are on a power trip and not doing business in the real world. I suppose I should not talk too wildly because I have no idea about what rules my hosting service has in place. I take that to mean that there are none because we have been here 16 years and I violated every one of the rules you talked about, and then some. LOL
Google is about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine. They are keeping track of that silly home page in more detail than you can shake a stick at. That's how I know only 5 people clicked on it last month. Google told me so in one of their multiple maps. There seems to be two major issues they are trying to point out. One has to do with malformed crumbs. Well, there is indeed a few formats one can use for constructing that type of navigation. Your sites definitely would benefit from what the crumbs were intended to do. My portal is a one way street. It points to the sites I maintain, but there is no way back. Thus crumbs are meaningless in my case.
The second issue is they can't find a category in one of the archives. Amazingly, however, they can find the URL to the category they claim is invalid. It's invalid because they are using an illegal URL to look for it. As I mentioned above they are referencing the root directory in the URL but that directory is not accessible by viewers of the web sites. It's not viewable because all the sensitive data for my account is in it and they are told in the robots.txt file to keep out; not to mention the hosting service won't allow just anybody to view it. Furthermore, there are a dozen or more categories on that page. Why are they having problems with only one of them? They are all in the same place.
Well I've tried to figure out what they are doing but have not been able to. I'll look at it again when I'm up to it. The worst that can happen is that they won't index the home page at all in their mobile search engine. Fine. If they want me to fix it, they best come up with an error message that makes sense.
Google is about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine. They are keeping track of that silly home page in more detail than you can shake a stick at. That's how I know only 5 people clicked on it last month. Google told me so in one of their multiple maps. There seems to be two major issues they are trying to point out. One has to do with malformed crumbs. Well, there is indeed a few formats one can use for constructing that type of navigation. Your sites definitely would benefit from what the crumbs were intended to do. My portal is a one way street. It points to the sites I maintain, but there is no way back. Thus crumbs are meaningless in my case.
The second issue is they can't find a category in one of the archives. Amazingly, however, they can find the URL to the category they claim is invalid. It's invalid because they are using an illegal URL to look for it. As I mentioned above they are referencing the root directory in the URL but that directory is not accessible by viewers of the web sites. It's not viewable because all the sensitive data for my account is in it and they are told in the robots.txt file to keep out; not to mention the hosting service won't allow just anybody to view it. Furthermore, there are a dozen or more categories on that page. Why are they having problems with only one of them? They are all in the same place.
Well I've tried to figure out what they are doing but have not been able to. I'll look at it again when I'm up to it. The worst that can happen is that they won't index the home page at all in their mobile search engine. Fine. If they want me to fix it, they best come up with an error message that makes sense.
Re: Crumbs
I am more than pleased with my Host Provider!
They are much more lenient than others I know about.
And I doubt you will find any of them giving unlimited things for 5 to 9 bucks a month either.
Unlimited does not mean you can use up all their space for storage, unless you subscribe to their cloud storage account.
I've compared their new contract with the old contract, and they have given us more than the old contract did.
I understand them putting certain limits on Unlimited Web Space. Storage Space is Not Web Space.
But NOW they give us 50 gigs of free storage space, before it was only 5 gigs that I didn't know I had.
Unlimited subdomains, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited FTP accounts.
And since the merger, even SSL is free, and with a wildcard to cover all subdomains.
Unlimited mailboxes, not that I know why anyone would need so many, hi hi.
If you were a Host Provider, how would you go about checking to see if those users web site accounts were not using the space for mass storage? They do allow us a little storage for things like photo's or articles to link to. Which I thought they didn't do under the original contract. Turns out they did if you set it up properly by going through their set-up page instead of just uploading via FTP the way I did it. However, now I can create my own storage folders that contain items not linked in some fashion to my index page. Going through the web site set-up program, I can select a folder for on-line accessible storage, and one for web site unlinked storage. And now I can have a Mass Storage folder that holds 50 gigs of data. I forget the rate to get 200 gigs and 500 gigs, but the price was reasonable, only a few bucks a month.
So far, the only thing I've found in the new contract is Business Mail is a separate option. This does not mean I cannot use my web site mailboxes for inbound or outbound mail under a business name. It has something to do with bulk mailing.
Also, under my particular account type, my website is limited to so many hits per day, but it is way up there, a number I never have to worry about hitting, hi hi. However, should I start hitting those high numbers, the next package up only costs like 19 bucks a month. My package is Unlimited PLUS, which at the time I got it was 3 up from the lowest package. No reason not to take that package since it was only 2 bucks more per month at the time I got it. And now, as I mentioned previously, they have reduced my 9.99 per month rate paid yearly, to 5.00 per month auto-withdrawal.
Can't beat a deal like that!
They are much more lenient than others I know about.
And I doubt you will find any of them giving unlimited things for 5 to 9 bucks a month either.
Unlimited does not mean you can use up all their space for storage, unless you subscribe to their cloud storage account.
I've compared their new contract with the old contract, and they have given us more than the old contract did.
I understand them putting certain limits on Unlimited Web Space. Storage Space is Not Web Space.
But NOW they give us 50 gigs of free storage space, before it was only 5 gigs that I didn't know I had.
Unlimited subdomains, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited FTP accounts.
And since the merger, even SSL is free, and with a wildcard to cover all subdomains.
Unlimited mailboxes, not that I know why anyone would need so many, hi hi.
If you were a Host Provider, how would you go about checking to see if those users web site accounts were not using the space for mass storage? They do allow us a little storage for things like photo's or articles to link to. Which I thought they didn't do under the original contract. Turns out they did if you set it up properly by going through their set-up page instead of just uploading via FTP the way I did it. However, now I can create my own storage folders that contain items not linked in some fashion to my index page. Going through the web site set-up program, I can select a folder for on-line accessible storage, and one for web site unlinked storage. And now I can have a Mass Storage folder that holds 50 gigs of data. I forget the rate to get 200 gigs and 500 gigs, but the price was reasonable, only a few bucks a month.
So far, the only thing I've found in the new contract is Business Mail is a separate option. This does not mean I cannot use my web site mailboxes for inbound or outbound mail under a business name. It has something to do with bulk mailing.
Also, under my particular account type, my website is limited to so many hits per day, but it is way up there, a number I never have to worry about hitting, hi hi. However, should I start hitting those high numbers, the next package up only costs like 19 bucks a month. My package is Unlimited PLUS, which at the time I got it was 3 up from the lowest package. No reason not to take that package since it was only 2 bucks more per month at the time I got it. And now, as I mentioned previously, they have reduced my 9.99 per month rate paid yearly, to 5.00 per month auto-withdrawal.
Can't beat a deal like that!
Re: Crumbs
I probably misread what you put here but it seemed that you have or did have a few restrictions on what you could do with your website. It's costing me just under $9/mo to run this site plus the three others I maintain. I have unlimited disk storage. I didn't read the fine print but for the price that seems reasonable. Also there is no restriction on bandwidth, i.e., downloads and uploads. That too seems risky given this is a small business account. I'm not running a small business so that they host has nothing to worry about, but other people do. We do have limits on the number of subdomains and added domains. Also, only so many databases and FTP accounts are allowed. And, apparently, SSL is free. I just had a go round with them on that because it was supposedly enabled but never showed it as such in the browser. Anyway, it was free to make the conversion. Like your own experience, I'm happy with the guys I'm dealing with. The monthly fee dropped to less than half what I started out paying and get more for the price.
How the host would verify the amount of disk space I'm using is easy. If' it's linked to my website(s) is a whole different question. It's easy enough to check all the links, but doing the reverse to see if all the data is connected is a nightmare. Maybe that's why they allow unlimited storage. They don't have a way to check. LOL
How the host would verify the amount of disk space I'm using is easy. If' it's linked to my website(s) is a whole different question. It's easy enough to check all the links, but doing the reverse to see if all the data is connected is a nightmare. Maybe that's why they allow unlimited storage. They don't have a way to check. LOL
Re: Crumbs
I don't see how it would be difficult for them.
I remember at one time, I used to be able to go to my former ISP and see what websites were connected to my individual pages on my websites.
I do doubt they check everyone unless their storage space becomes excessive.
My information came from the original packet of New User Info I downloaded when I first signed up with them.
In a nutshell it simply stated that for an image or document to be considered part of a web page, that page must be linked directly or indirectly to my index.html page. I had to be able to get to all pages on my website if I started out at index.html and worked my way through to it. In other words, Page B could have a link from the index page, but page C could only be linked to page B.
In fact this was one of my first questions to them about my site before I moved it up there. I had the Formula for making my AP-TWP Recharge kit only linked to the AP-TWP Instructions page using an agreement line.
They said this was fine as long as I could get to it starting at the index page and going to the next page, and then the next, and so on and so forth.
What I could not do was use Web Space for storage.
This is why I only placed images in the GFX folder that I did have linked to a page, and then linked to that image directly in the GFX page to a website. But later was told I could have 5 gigs of space in a folder to keep images and documents for linking to from on-line.
Now, since the merger, they have given me 50 gigs of bulk storage space at no additional cost, but you can't link to it from a website. Apparently it is not directly on-line, even though I can get to it on-line via FTP or using their on-line web page to access it from there.
I've tried getting to it from a web browser and get an access denied warning.
I remember at one time, I used to be able to go to my former ISP and see what websites were connected to my individual pages on my websites.
I do doubt they check everyone unless their storage space becomes excessive.
My information came from the original packet of New User Info I downloaded when I first signed up with them.
In a nutshell it simply stated that for an image or document to be considered part of a web page, that page must be linked directly or indirectly to my index.html page. I had to be able to get to all pages on my website if I started out at index.html and worked my way through to it. In other words, Page B could have a link from the index page, but page C could only be linked to page B.
In fact this was one of my first questions to them about my site before I moved it up there. I had the Formula for making my AP-TWP Recharge kit only linked to the AP-TWP Instructions page using an agreement line.
They said this was fine as long as I could get to it starting at the index page and going to the next page, and then the next, and so on and so forth.
What I could not do was use Web Space for storage.
This is why I only placed images in the GFX folder that I did have linked to a page, and then linked to that image directly in the GFX page to a website. But later was told I could have 5 gigs of space in a folder to keep images and documents for linking to from on-line.
Now, since the merger, they have given me 50 gigs of bulk storage space at no additional cost, but you can't link to it from a website. Apparently it is not directly on-line, even though I can get to it on-line via FTP or using their on-line web page to access it from there.
I've tried getting to it from a web browser and get an access denied warning.