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Posted by ted on August 20, 2007, 3:08 am
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I have an old link that was widely distributed. I would now like to
put a link on that old
page that will go to a new page without displaying anything.
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Posted by André Gillibert on August 20, 2007, 5:04 am
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> I have an old link that was widely distributed. I would now like to
> put a link on that old
> page that will go to a new page without displaying anything.
>
Assuming your "old" link is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore (i.e.
people ought to update their bookmarks and their links to the new target),
you should use a 301 Moved Permanently HTTP redirect.
See:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/UserAgent.html
Please, do not use the http-equiv=refresh meta, it "breaks the back
button".
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/reback
If your content management system is good, you should be able to setup a
301 redirection.
http://www.w3.org/TR/chips/#gl2
If you use an Apache server:
http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/articles/301-redirect-apache.asp
Simply add a "Redirect 301 /old/old.html http://domain/new/new.html" line
in a .htaccess file.
If you use an ASP server, PHP, a CGI script or ColdFusion, it should be
easy too:
http://www.somacon.com/p145.php
A few others at:
http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
If you still don't find your management system there, then, use google:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=how+to+HTTP+301+redirect
If google doesn't help, contact the authority responsible of your content
mangement system.
Note: Choose a good scheme for your URI, so that they're not likely to
change:
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
I hope it helps.
--
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Posted by David E. Ross on August 20, 2007, 11:34 am
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On 8/20/2007 12:08 AM, ted@shapin.org wrote:
> I have an old link that was widely distributed. I would now like to
> put a link on that old
> page that will go to a new page without displaying anything.
>
Actually you should display a warning page. That way, visitors who have
set bookmarks (in IE, "favorites") or who have links in their own Web
pages can update them.
I generally replace the old page with a warning page for about 3 months.
The warning page tells the user that the URI has changed and gives the
new URI as a link. In case the user has dozed off or gone to get a
snack, I do not use REFRESH to reach the new page from the warning page.
As an alternative, you can set a "soft-link" on your Web server. This
causes any reference to the old file-path to become a reference to the
new file path. For this, you must have a shell account on your sever so
that you can establish a Telnet or similar session.
In the directory that used to hold the old file, execute the command:
ln -s newfilepath oldfile
where "newfilepath" is the name and location of the new file relative to
the old file's directory and "oldfile" is the complete name (with
extension) of the old file. Thus, if I had an old page
<http://www.rossde.com/foo/work.html> and replaced it with
<http://www.rossde.com/bar/fun.html>, the command would be executed in
the /foo directory and would be
ln -s ../bar/fun.html work.html
Note that I use this only for temporary changes in URIs because I want
users to be able to update their bookmarks. I also use it where I
changed a graphic file and don't want to update all the HTML files that
reference it (e.g., replacing a PNG file with a GIF file).
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Natural foods can be harmful: Look at all the
people who die of natural causes.
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Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on August 20, 2007, 12:07 pm
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Scripsit David E. Ross:
> On 8/20/2007 12:08 AM, ted@shapin.org wrote:
>> I have an old link that was widely distributed. I would now like to
>> put a link on that old
>> page that will go to a new page without displaying anything.
>
> Actually you should display a warning page.
Hardly. Sounds like splash page. And it is.
> That way, visitors who
> have set bookmarks (in IE, "favorites") or who have links in their
> own Web pages can update them.
How many people care about such things? Most people just want to see the
content.
If you care about such issues, you should include a note in the actual page
content, in its new address. Something like "This page now (since [insert
data]) resides at a new address. You may wish to consider updating it in
your bookmarks (favorites)." But even that is a bit naive.
> I generally replace the old page with a warning page for about 3
> months.
If you do that, search engines will see that the page content has radically
changed and is now minimal. What will they do? Well, they _may_ check the
link and consider indexing the linked page, as a new page. Or maybe as a new
address for an old page if they do some heuristics, but will they?
Instead, if you use HTTP redirect, as already described in a very good reply
here, search engines will notify that the address has changed and act
accordingly.
--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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Posted by Andy Dingley on August 20, 2007, 12:46 pm
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> Actually you should display a warning page.
Not for a 301. It's gone, just deal with it.
For a 302 there's some justification to temporary notice of roadworks.
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