Thanks Paul, I missed that one. The link https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/2224 seemed to be the answer. However I followed the instructions and wrote an htaccess text file which I saved as "htaccess.txt", but when I tried to rename it as ".htaccess" a message said, "You must type a file name."

Windows, of course. Excellent so far...  I do use FileZilla and I was able to install the .htaccess file named properly as you recommended. I wrote in it "DirectoryIndex blog/index.php" and on entering the main website url lthe blog page appeared! Magic.

Unfortunately it did not display the right-hand column which shows Recent Posts, Archives and Links. These were shown instead at the foot of the page in text form. By clicking on the Recipes page tab and then returning to the Blog page tab they appeared properly. This behaviour was duplicated in a different browser.

Another problem appears to be related. Now when I enter http://www.naturalhealthdiet.uk/admin instead of getting the admin login screen I get a list of the files headed "Index of /admin". When I deleted the .htaccess file the admin login screen appeared correctly.

I can get the admin login screen by entering "/admin/index.php", so that's ok, but it doesn't solve the problem with the Recent Posts, etc., not displaying initially.

I've currently deleted the htaccess file to allow my family to find the blog when they enter the url with "/blog", so you won't be able to test what I've said above about Recent Posts. I can put it back if you want me to.

Please add the following line to your new .htaccess file, which will switch off directory listing:

Options -Indexes

Hi Paul. I amended the .htaccess file to say

DirectoryIndex blog/index.php
Options -Indexes

Then when I entered the main url www.naturalhealthdiet.uk/admin I received the message: Error 403: "You don't have permission to access /admin/ on this server."

Also it didn't solve the problem with not displaying the Recent Posts boxes, which you probably hadn't expected it to do anyway.

You need to enter the full qualified URL which is:

http://www.naturalhealthdiet.uk/admin/login.php

as opposed to:

http://www.naturalhealthdiet.uk/admin/

The latter will not allow you access precisely because we have asked it not to by disabling directory listings...  in other words if there is not an index file in the directory specified (in this case 'admin') then access will be denied.

Hope that makes it a bit clearer.

You definitely want to keep directory listings switched off if possible, from a security point of view...  it's very good practice.

But switch it off in individual directories if necessary, as opposed to globally on the entire site.

This sounds like a simple and localised browser cache issue.  Please try clearing your browser caches (both browsers) and then testing again.

Alternatively please reinstate the htaccess file so that we can take a look for ourselves.

Many thanks!

Hi Paul. I deleted the  both browsers but no change, so I've reinstated the .htaccess file, and once again on entering www.naturalhealthdiet.uk the blog page comes up first, as desired, but without showing the side boxes. I'll leave it like that until you can get back to me. Thanks.

Thanks for reinstating the htaccess file, Arnold.

I see exactly what you mean now.  It's not just the side bar which is in the wrong place...  if you look carefully there are other differences too, and I'm 99% sure that this is because the correct CSS files are no longer linked to the blog page on account of the Directory Index instruction.

This is because the blog is one folder down from root on your server, and the links to the relevant CSS files are relative links as opposed to absolute ones...  I'm pretty certain we will need to add some additional lines to the htaccess file to ensure that the CSS (styling) for the blog can be found.

Please leave this with me for the time being and I will do my best to find the correct code for your needs.  I will be in touch!

Grazie. I tried putting that code into the blog page and into the recipe page separately, but neither worked. I also tried it in both at once!

When I select the blog tag from the recipe page it displays correctly. Does give any clue?

When I select the blog tag from the recipe page the browser address window says www.naturalhealthdiet.uk/blog/index.php and then it works all right.

Just to confirm, the .htaccess file is in the  main foodblog folder, and it says DirectoryIndex blog/index.php
Options -Indexes

Hi Paul. You were quite correct. I omitted the "<" and the ">". Obviously I wasn't concentrating on the fact that it was HTML we were writing - when I learned SQL the book used "<" and ">" like quotation marks. The web site now works fine and the blog appears like the main page. Thanks KolAsim!

I still think it would be nice if in some future edition an option to make a simple standalone blog could be included.