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Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.

Are you here to participate in a specific proposal? Click on the proposal tag (with the dark outline) to see only posts about that proposal and not all of the others that are in progress. Tags are at the bottom of each post.

Posts tagged Webmasters

Use for questions that belong to the Webmasters community proposal.

Community tag for the Webmasters proposal. See the proposal for which topics are covered, the scope of the community, and other details.

Use this tag for posts in the Incubator Q&A and Meta categories that concern this particular proposal.

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Incubator Q&A One cert with many domains, or one domain per cert?

I've noticed that it's possible to use DNS Name multiple times, so that a TLS certificate will cover multiple domains. Alternatively, you could generate a separate cert for each domain. What are ...

1 answer  ·  posted 8mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 8mo ago by Michael‭

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Incubator Q&A Proper way to create your own TLS certificates

What exactly are the steps to creating your own TLS certificates such that they create minimal error messages for users? For example, a simple self-signed certificate will trigger a lot of errors ...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by Michael‭

Question Webmasters tls
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Incubator Q&A What happens to TLS name constraints when the client does not support them?

I only have a working knowledge of TLS. TLS today supports name constraints, to restrict which domains a CA can issue certs for: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5280#section-4.2.1.10 I've seen ...

1 answer  ·  posted 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 9mo ago by Peter Taylor‭

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Incubator Q&A How to mitigate the risk of self-signed root CA?

Since self-signed server certs are discouraged nowadays, often people create their own root CA and sign server certs with that. Obviously client apps won't trust the root CA, so the admin must the...

0 answers  ·  posted 9mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question Webmasters tls
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Incubator Q&A What's the deal with content farms?

In the last 5-10 years, I've noticed that many searches (especially Google) about technical or semi-technical questions, have the results clogged with "content farm" results. It's hard to precisel...

0 answers  ·  posted 10mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  edited 10mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question Webmasters
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Incubator Q&A Do search engines detect and penalize AI generated content?

If I want to use chat GPT or other large language model AI to generate content for my website, will that be a good strategy for SEO? Can search engines detect and penalize content that was written...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 11mo ago by Michael‭

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Incubator Q&A Are certificate errors always reported immediately, or is validation cached?

I visited a site that I use infrequently and got a certificate error, specifically NET:ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID. I contacted the owner, who asked for a screenshot. That surprised me, as I had a...

1 answer  ·  posted 12mo ago by Monica Cellio‭  ·  last activity 12mo ago by matthewsnyder‭

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Incubator Q&A Do search engines use content user ratings for ranking purposes?

I have a Q&A site where users can upvote and downvote the questions and answers. Does Google use these votes as a ranking signal? Will pages that my users vote up rank better than pages that ...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Andreas witnessed the end of the world today‭

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Incubator Q&A Can an email's Reply-To have a different domain than its From?

Are there any negative effects[1] when sending an email wherein the From header is an email address on my server's domain but the Reply-To header is an email address on a different domain, specific...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Michael‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Michael‭

Question Webmasters email
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Incubator Q&A Why don't registrars redact country and state/province?

How come country and state/province is often excluded from WHOIS privacy? So everything else is redacted, but not country and state. However, apparently there's no special requirement from ICANN, s...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question Webmasters domains
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Incubator Q&A Will an XML sitemap improve SEO in terms of crawling, indexing, and ranking?

I've heard that I should create an XML sitemap containing all the URLs from my site for SEO. My site needs to improve: The number of URLs that get crawled by search engine bots The number of U...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭

Descriptions Webmasters

Site name Webmasters (Meta discussion of the name) Description Questions and answers about building, deploying, maintaining, operating, monetizing, and marketing websites. Topics Topics covere...

posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭

Wiki Webmasters
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Incubator Q&A How viable is generic SEO in 2023?

I recall that back in the dark ages of web search (Altavista), search engines were naive and keywords were a huge thing in SEO. People would even create landing pages stuffed with keywords in tiny,...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

Question Webmasters seo
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Incubator Q&A Is fresh content always needed for SEO?

I've seen recommendations that search engines like "fresh" content and that I should be continually launching new content on my website for SEO. Is that always the case? That seems to directly co...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭

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Incubator Q&A Will improving my domain authority (DA) as measured by Moz help SEO?

I've been working on improving my site's domain authority as reported by Moz in the hopes that it helps our Google rankings. I have some doubts about it though. Google won't be able to see Moz's c...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Why won't setting a CNAME DNS record for the domain apex work?

I am setting up a domain that uses a CNAME record so that is hosted on the same server as another site. I seem to be able to set up the www subdomain just fine with a CNAME but I'm having trouble ...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Is Google Analytics 4 able to integrate with domain properties from Google Search Console?

In the old Universal Analytics, I was unable to show stats from a "domain" property that I had created in Google Search Console. I was only able to integrate a "prefix" property. I haven't tried ...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A What is the difference between content aggregation and content syndication

When I use content from other sites on my own website, I don't know if I should call that "content aggregation" or "content syndication." What are the definitions of "content aggregation" and "con...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A In AWS, do you need to use IPv6 on EC2 to enable IPv6 with an ELB?

I have a website hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS) that uses Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances behind an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB). The load balancer is the newer "application" type. I've...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A How should canonical URLs be used with comments?

Canonical URLS are highly recommended for SEO and to prevent competition between duplicate pages. I've been trying to implement this, but I'm unsure how to implement this for pages which repeat but...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Ullallulloo‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Is it possible to set up a website that will last for 100 years, paid in advance?

I've seen a lot of domain names expire or hosting go dark when a website owner stops maintaining the site. Is there a way to prevent that for my own site? I'd like it to remain up, well after I'm ...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

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Incubator Q&A What security best practices are applicable to any public website?

Let's say I want to host a public website, for use by anyone on the internet. I am deliberately leaving the exact nature of the website vague, because I want to ask for general things that are appl...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

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Incubator Q&A Is digest authentication more secure than basic authentication over HTTPS?

Apache has modules for both digest authentication and basic authentication. I've seen recommendations to use digest authentication because it doesn't send the password in clear text. However, if ...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

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Incubator Q&A Is wordpress.com the official hosting site for the WordPress content management system?

I've been told that I should get a WordPress website. Looking into it, there is an open-source content management system available from wordpress.org and hosting available for it from wordpress.co...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by manassehkatz‭

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Incubator Q&A How do I back up a WordPress website?

I'd like to have a backup of my WordPress website. It looks like I'll need to back up the database, some settings, and some uploads. How do I create backups for my site?

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by ArtOfCode‭

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Incubator Q&A How do I implement a redirect in JavaScript

My web host only lets me upload static files. They don't support .htaccess or dynamic scripting. As such, I can't implement 301 redirects between pages. I should be able to put some JavaScript in...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by ArtOfCode‭

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Incubator Q&A Can I use a domain name I already own with my AWS-hosted website?

I'm hoping to move my website to cloud hosting using AWS. Can I use my existing domain with AWS, or do I need to buy a new domain at AWS? If I can use the domain I already own, how do I transfer ...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by ArtOfCode‭

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Incubator Q&A How do I configure Cloudflare to redirect my alternate domain name with HTTPS support?

I have several alternate domain names that I would like to redirect to my site: misspelling.example -> example.com longer-domain-with-hyphens.example -> example.com old-brand.example -&g...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by ArtOfCode‭

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Incubator Q&A When choosing a domain name, is it more important to have keywords in the domain name, or to brand my website?

I'm building a company with a website about widgets. The .com domain name with just "widgets" is already taken, and so are a lot of other keyword related domains. I could get a domain on an alter...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by ArtOfCode‭

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Incubator Q&A Rewrite rule or mod_proxy config for reverse proxy in Apache?

I looks like either RewriteEngine on RewriteRule (.*) http://localhost:8080/$1 [P,L] or ProxyPass "/" "http://localhost:8080/" ProxyPassReverse "/" "http://localhost:8080/" would allow...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A In which order should the brand name and article title appear in the page <title>?

I've read that for usability and SEO, the the <title> tags on your pages should contain both the article title and your brand name. I'm wondering which order is better for them? Which of th...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Which search engines crawl, render, and index content from single page applications that rely on client side JavaScript rendering?

It would be much easier if our website could use a single page application (SPA) framework such as React or Angular without relying on server side rendering (SSR). I've heard that some search engi...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Should I truncate my long page titles with ellipsis for SEO?

I've seen SEO advice that the ideal length for a page title is 50 to 60 characters and that the maximum length is 80 characters. Our site relies on user generated titles for our content and our us...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

Question Webmasters title seo
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Incubator Q&A Why is a self-referencing hreflang required?

I recently implemented hreflang tags in my website to tell search engines about content translations in several languages. I was very surprised to find that a self-referencing hreflang is required...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Meta Tagged "Webmasters" vs "webmasters" — tag sometimes hidden

Some of the posts in Incubator Q&A are tagged [Webmasters] (with a capital W) and some are tagged [webmasters] (with a lower case w). The posts with capital letter in the tag have that tag sh...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A When importing Creative Commons licensed content from another site, how to ensure that search engines won't penalize my site?

Codidact has tried importing questions from other Q/A sites like Stack Exchange. However search engines have not liked that. Those questions and answers don't usually get indexed on Codidact, and...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Can I ask Google to stop indexing every URL that isn't in my XML sitemap?

I have an XML sitemap containing all the URLs that I want search engines to index. Unfortunately Google is indexing some URLs that are not in my XML sitemap. Is there a setting in Google Search C...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A How do I set up DNS records for home hosting?

I've been hosting my website on shared hosting, but I'm tired of paying their monthly fee. I want to move my website to my home computer. How do I need to configure my DNS records to make that ha...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭

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Incubator Q&A Is it a good idea to host my website at home?

I have a physical machine available and I don't want to pay hosting fees. What if I just host my website on my home server? What are common pitfalls of doing so?

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 1y ago by matthewsnyder‭

Question Webmasters hosting
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Incubator Q&A Aggregate 404 errors from log file on the Linux command line

My web server is logging in combined log format and my host gives me SSH access to my server where the logs are stored. I see entries in the log file for 404 errors like: 10.10.10.10 - - [10/Jun/...

1 answer  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Loosen quality standards without losing our power users

Our website relies heavily on user generated content and power users that edit, curate, and moderate that content. Recently the amount of content contributed to our site has taken a nose dive. Loo...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Monica Cellio‭

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Incubator Q&A Can I use Selenium to automate CLS testing?

I've been bitten several times by cumulative layout shift (CLS) issues with my website. I've found out about them when I view the reports in Google Search Console. We have a good set of tests for...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Can I get a list of broken links to my site from Google Search Console?

I've been looking through Google Search Console trying to find a place where it shows me broken links to my site, but it may be that the information I'm looking for isn't available there. I've fou...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Split articles into multiple pages to improve bounce rate?

My website has long articles. Many users click to a single article, read it, and leave our site. I want more of these users to engage more with our site. I have Google Analytics installed and I'm...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Can I redirect node/1 to my home page in Drupal?

In Drupal, I've configured my home page to be served from /node/1 as recommended in Setting up your home page | Drupal.org. However https://mysite.example/node/1 shows the exact same content as th...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Why isn't my .htaccess file taking effect?

My .htaccess files doesn't seem to be doing anything. I've created one in my document root directory and put a redirect into it: Redirect 301 / https://othersite.example/ However, the redirect...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A Can I configure virtual hosting in .htaccess?

My website host gives me a single document root directory for all my domains. I'd like to separate out each of my domains into a separate subfolder. Can I use .htaccess in this directory to confi...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A How do I choose a priority for each URL in my XML sitemap?

The XML sitemap protocol defines a priority field that is says "... is relative, it is only used to select between URLs on your site." It doesn't give any guidance on how I should rank my URLs for...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A How do I add a consent management platform that has been certified by Google to my website?

I recently received and email from Google AdSense that says: Starting later this year, Google will requiring all publishers to use a Consent Management Platform (CMP) that has been certified by ...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭

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Incubator Q&A How can I create a carousel on the home page of my WordPress site?

I'd like to add a rotating banner (known as a carousel) to the home page of my WordPress site. I've looked through the settings in WordPress and I don't see an obvious way to do this. I've seen o...

0 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭  ·  edited 1y ago by Stephen Ostermiller‭