So we are moving our site from fatcow to godaddy. The htaacess file on fatcow is empty. When I go in RW and go into the publishing settings the htaccess there is empty as well. I am not a coder and I have no idea what to do. Godaddy says the site can’t go live without this and the associated email won’t be active either until this is all fixed. Can anyone offer any help?
Thanks
Charles
An empty htaccess file will not cause any problems, in it’s self.
I can only imagine that the host is requiring you to add something in the htaccess file to address some issue the site would have without it.
But this could be a number of things. You need to ask them what specific issue they see with an empty htaccess file.
When you know what they want you to address, someone here will be able to provide the code to place in the htaccess file.
Are you sure they (godaddy) wants you to change something in your htaccess file?
Nothing inside the htaccess file should affect email, so it sounds more like they need you to change the DNS records. That needs to take place on the account that you requested the domain with.
Doobox Godaddy is telling me they need all the files of our rapidweaver site in the htaccess file. This makes no sense to me. Hopefully it makes sense to someone here.
Nor me I’m afraid.
So I don’t know what I am suppose to do here. This is our family business site and our website and email have been down now for over 2 weeks. this is becoming a nightmare.
We’ve not heard of this before, sounds very strange. The htaccess file does not affect email as far as we’re aware.
No the website is not working because they say the htaccess file is empty that RW created. They claim the site can’t go live until this is cleared up.
So Godaddy is telling me the htaccess files should contain content information for the site and that I should get a developer review. This makes no sense to me.
Can you ask them what the .htaccess should contain, do they have an example?
They don’t they just keep telling me that a developer will understand this. They claim that they can not give suggestions on code and developement.
It sounds to us like you’re in contact with someone at GoDaddy that doesn’t know what they are doing. I’d ask for your case to be escalated to someone more senior that can help.
We know this is not a solution right now, but we always recommend Chillidog Hosting as @barchard is super helpful (and knows RW) and wouldn’t give you the run-around like GoDaddy.
So this is what they are telling me
there is no index file nor any content in nor .htaccess, so you need to make changes according to your website content.
Oh, maybe your index file is missing… or named incorrectly.
Can you upload your project (RapidWeaver Document) so we can take a look at it?
Sorry to hear :\ I know GoDaddy does require some .htaccess code to make contact forms to work. Maybe a couple of items to check,
index.php or index.html
.htaccess file, but this is usually a default configuration and shouldn’t require anything from youindex.php or index.html
I hope that helps.
-Greg
How do I upload the RW file? When I click on the upload icon the RW file is greyed out. it’s a 38mb file.
I’ve had a few clients on GoDaddy and always problems. Moved them away to our hosting, saved them money and saved them issues. Why not try Chillidog - RW friendly and you wont hear a word against them.
Back to your htaccess file - it is useful for a number of things but using it to make email work is less usual. And if their support is telling you to put all RW files in htaccess they must be stoned… You can’t put files in htaccess - it’s a text document.
Things you might (should) add to an htaccess document include canonical redirects to ensure all ‘versions’ of your website point to the canonical URL. e.g. www points to non www, or http points to https. Other redirects also go in there as do instructions for page not found errors and more. in cPanel, all redirects you set up are added automatically to htaccess so you don’t need to code.
I’m pretty sure if you move to a decent hosting company like chillidog you’ll be up and running in 10 minutes.
So we are tied into a 3 year deal with Godaddy. Our email is tied to our website. With our website not being live that is creating email issues. If we can get a handle on this htaccess issue it will allow us to get the site live and also get our email up and running. We are a small family farm in western Colorado (usa) and I did not know about chillidog or we would have gone that route. Not having the site and email running is killing us. So when I go into RW and view the htaccess there is nothing there. shouldn’t there be something?
As others have said, what GoDaddy’s support is telling you makes no sense. You should not need all of the RW files listed in an htaccess file for your site to work. Also, an htaccess file should have no affect on email, unless they have a very, very unusual hosting setup. If that was the case, they should be able to put in what’s required or tell you what’s needed.
I have a feeling that there is something else going on like your DNS pointed to an incorrect server. What’s the domain name for your site?
An htaccess file is an Apache WEB-SERVER local directives file. It should have nothing to do with the email.
Your emails should never go to a web server, but should be going directly to GoDady’s mail server. This is controlled by DNS records (MX records to be specific).
The htaccess file is not needed for godaddy. I just checked with someone I know that still host’s a couple sites on Godaddy and they aren’t using htaccess at all.
Since something is getting lost in what godaddy has told you and what is really needed, might I suggest you communicate with them in writing so we can see what exactly they are saying.
You might want to give us a URL to the site along with an email address that you have setup on godaddy.
Apache doesn’t require an htaccess file to work, so if they are telling you otherwise they’re full of it. It’s a file that is primarily used in shared hosting environments to allow you to override default directives for each domain running in the shared environment.
It would have nothing to do with emails (Apache is a web page server not an email server).
Go through this from Go Daddy and perhaps give us some screenshots of your DNS records.