This sounds like an issue with Apache or with permissions on the directory (not something in concrete5 itself). Theoretically if you can access "http://<youripaddress>/~swiftcre" then there's no reason concrete5 shouldn't work there. I would try just putting a normal index.html file there and see if you can access that first (without all of the concrete5 stuff in there -- especially the .htaccess file).
If that works then next I would put the concrete5 stuff there and double-check the .htaccess file -- is there a RewriteBase rule in there that points to a different directory (it should be "/~swiftcre" I think)? Also check the permissions using your FTP program -- are the files and folders readable for the public or for the group or user that Apache is running as?

as jordan says, this should work just fine. However, if you want to test it under your new domain before it has moved, you can always put an entry in your hosts file. Set your site.php BASE_URL tohttp://your-domain.com and DIR_REL to / and then in C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts add an entry at the bottom: 123.123.123.123 your-domain.com. You should then be able to browse the site as if the domain was working...

Jon

i believe its resolved, PM's FTW!

Thanks for all the help, everybody. Unfortunately I'm still stuck:

- Created a plain, Concrete-less index.html with a single link to another plain html file in the same directory. That worked perfectly well.
- The .htaccess file has no RewriteBase rule (see attached). Neither getting rid of the .htaccess file nor supplying an empty one made any difference.
- Did a "chmod -R a+w *" on the root c5 directory to ensure read permissions on all files/folders for everyone. Still no luck.
- The site worked perfectly on the same server before I moved it.

I'm sure this is something stupid I've done, but I'm not sure where to look next. Any suggestions welcome!

Thanks again!

Just for the record, I recently had to install a client site on their server, and ran into the exact same problem. The response I got from their tech support was "The preview URL does not work well with more complicated applications. You'll want to
point an actual domain or subdomain there to fully test."

So... I guess this just doesn't work with the "/~whatever" url's.

Too bad...

-Jordan

Hi Jordan,

Everything seems to be working now. In case this is helpful to anyone coming after me, here's what I did:

- Re-moved the site using Jerry Thompson's instructions here: http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/installation/moving-concr...
I did this to be certain that I'd cleared and disabled the cache before the move. Also wanted to make sure that all file permissions were preserved during the move. Finally, Jerry's tutorial has explicit details on what settings to use when exporting the database via phpMyAdmin. Doing this was necessary but not sufficient to get things working: links were still dead.
- Set up a real domain name, as you suggest in your most recent message. This was also necessary but not sufficient. Until I did the re-move (as described above), things didn't work. But I can go back and re-set the site config to point tohttp://<my-ip-address/~swiftcre... and I get the same issues as before.

So in the end it looks like I had multiple issues. Thanks for your help--I appreciate it.

One last question on this: do you see the problem with the temp ~ addresses as an issue with the server config or with Concrete or something else? It sounds to me like a Concrete issue, but I don't know enough to be sure of that.

It's a combination of both the server config and concrete5 -- c5 is using certain php functionality that isn't always available on servers (or doesn't work on some servers?).

The functionality that this method provides is very useful, though, so I don't think they're going to change it -- 99% of the time it works.

You and me are just out of luck until the domain name transfers over!