New URL not working from TI's Find a Club function

We've changed our club URL on FTH, and our club president had TI change it on their website's Find a Club page. When we click on "visit this website"on that page, nothing happens, or the page can't be found by our browsers.

The president wrote back to TI to sort this out and received the following reply:

Thank you for your email. I am happy to provide assistance. You are correct in saying that the prospective members should be directed to the clubs website when clicking on that link.


Toastmasters International is not affiliated with FreeToastHost nor do we provide technical support for their website. It is a free resource tool that is owned and managed by a 3rd party and is offered to Toastmasters clubs around the world through the Toastmasters International website as a courtesy. Please use the following information to assist with addressing the issues with your clubs URL.

Click on the link Register for Support at the top or the bottom of the FreeToastHost page.


If you enter www.toastmastersclubs.org you can see on that home page the following information to assist you.


Support Site
FTH 2.0 Video User Guide
Docs

This was not particularly helpful - can you guide us to a solution? I would have thought it was a problem at the TI end, and not the FTH end.

Also, how can we get Google and Bing to use the new URL?

Thanks very much.

Sorry, I submitted the topic first in "general discussion" and realized it should have been a support request.

B. Ruff
Yarmouth Toastmasters, #4653
yarmouth.toastmastersclubs.org/

They mangled the website address in find a club... it has a space character encoded (%20) in it:



It should be:
Refer to the following to fix it:
support.toastmastersclubs.org/doc/item/u...s-international-site

Thanks, Steve,

And how do I make the new URL come up properly in a Google or Bing search?

And how do I make the new URL come up properly in a Google or Bing search?

That is going to be a bit more challenging beyond getting the Find a Club entry corrected (probably the most important thing). Your best bet is to use the Bing and/or Google Webmaster tools. Essentially, when you do that, you are forcing them to recognize the new URL and you can request them to re-index your website immediately. You will need to get the meta tags from them and plug them into the admin console. (This is a form of authentication... proves you have the rights to the website.)

See here: support.toastmastersclubs.org/doc/item/website-statistics (the part on Bing / Google webmaster tools)

You will also want to do some SEO. See here: support.toastmastersclubs.org/doc/item/google-ranking

I say this is a bit challenging because normally I think there is a bit of a lag to get the search engines to re-index your website with the new url. I am suggesting webmaster tools a way to reduce that lag.

So sorry to keep on at this. I really have no formal knowledge of working with web pages, and am really in over my head. I've managed to get Google to recognize our new URL, but the procedures for BIng don't seem to work. Bing's meta tag option tells me to paste it into the "head" section of our default page, but I don't know how to do that. Pasting it into the designated spot in the Admin. console doesn't result in a verification. I've tried pasting it into the text section of the Home Page, but that didn't work either.

The link to Bing Webmaster Tools in the document you referenced sends me to the Google Search Console!

Another problem is how to get them to drop the old, longer URL - it still comes up first in a Google search for Yarmouth Toastmasters.

Thanks again for your help.

Barb Ruff

Oh, I should add that the TI Find a Club function is now directing traffic to our new URL. We were able to fix it ourselves once we realized that the "20%" was a space, which could easily be removed by a club officer.