"401 Authorization Required" setting

[jean_pierre]

Hello,
I have a question about my shopping cart settings.
The developer who set it up made it (I guess) private or hidden so when somebody goes to the site, for example: www.mysite.com/shop I get a “401 authorization required” page. Where can I go to make my page visible? I need to change the settings. I am so new with ShopSite and I need help.

Thank you
JP

[Annaflax]

Don't be disheartened but it can take weeks even months for your site to be indexed.
To start with, use this free service to check how well your site is optimised:
http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/
then use their free meta tag generator to upgrade your site if necessary.
Next try and get some links from similar sites that are already indexed and preferably have good page rank. That way the search engines will follow the links to your site.
Next create a blog and write some articles with links back to your site and /or publish articles or press releases informing people of your site.
You can inform the search engines of your site (with Google, sign in and go to Webmaster Tools and then add your site - you will be required to add an html code verification to your page) but I have found that it makes little difference to the time it takes to get indexed.

[jean_pierre]

Thank you for the tip
But the developer set the shopping cart last year. Is there a way I can investigate why the page is broken?

Thank you

[Jim]

It sounds to me like they either password protected the directory or the permissions on the directory have been changed so the user the webserver is running as cannot access the files.

If the directory is password protected there will be hidden files with the name .htaccess and .htpasswd (they have a leading . ). So check using ftp or ssh and see if those files exist in the directory.

It the permissions are wrong you will need to find out what user the webserver is running as and change permissions so that that user can access them.

Note, If you are not familiar with the operating system your server is using you should get help from your host for either of the above situations.