Thread: Site Verification using html file

Google, TheFind and others need to "verify" our site ownership by checking that a certain blank html file is present on our site. They provide the file name and we put it on the site.

ASPDNSF seems to intercept all html requests and redirect to a blank shopping cart page. On some of our sites the vendor says we verify OK on other sites the vendor says we dont' verify.

Is there a workaround for this problem?

Thanks,
Tom

I have had no issues with the Find and Google. What sites are giving you the problems?

Today, it's TheFind. They need to verify our site ownership. They have two possible verification methods. We can put a graphic and related code on our home page, which we prefer not to do or we can put a blank html file on the site which is our preferred method.

They provide the file name in the form of: thefind999.html where 999 is a long string to identify our site. I put the blank file into the Web folder of our site but TheFind says they cannot verify our site. If I try to go to this blank file via www.ourdomain.com/thefind999.html I get our ASPDNSF site with a blank page in the variable data portion. In other words, I get our ASPDNSF header, footer and left nav with a blank section where product or category would normally be.

We have 15 sites and I've had this problem before with Google Analytics verification process although it doesn't happen on every site. It appears that ASPDNSF intercepts the html requests on some of our sites but not all.

I'm wondering if there is an app.config setting or some way to get around this problem. I put the file in the Web directory. That's the right place, I hope.

Any help is appreciated.
Tom

try removing HtmlPages handler in the web.config and see if that helps. Just to forewarn you this may cause issues if you are using the "OSCommerce Ultimate SEO Url Patterns" routes. On a clean install those routes are commented out but it is still worth warning about. I'm not sure why routing is working that way for file that does exist on the disk. But based off what information I have it leads me to believe that is where the issue lies.

Thanks for the help.

I didn't find an HtmlPages handler in the web.config file (this site is on 7.0.1) however, I did notice that the url is being re-written.

I submit: www.ourdomain.com/thefind999.html and on the address bar it is changed to:
www.ourdomain.com/t-thefind999.aspx.

I compared the web.config files between two sites that are working differently and the web.config files compared exactly (except for db name of course).

I see there are some url rewrites in the web.config file but they don't seem to be intercepting html files, plus the two web.config files compared the same even though the two sites work differently. It must be something outside of web.config.

Any more ideas?

Hmm in that case then it leads me to think there is some kind of rewrite/redirect rule in effect outside of the applicaion. Be it a 3rd party software to do the rewrite/redirects or using rewrite/redirects that comes out of the box with 2008. It may be an inherited rule since nothing shows for .html files in web.config. Rewrite rules should show up in the web.config if you are using what comes with 2008.