dedundant page redirect

[neilkw]

Re dundant!
Hi

I am in the process of uploading my newly designed site but am aware that a whole host of pages of the old site have been cached and logged by google, msn etc

Now i'm obviously keen to keep a good rating in the engines but I will have to take down these old pages so as to keep my remote server looking clean and tidy. Is their a script that will redirect users to my new index.html page if they are directed by a search engine to an old page address that does no longer exist.

Hope that makes sense.

A temporary measure I have used is to keep those pages live but just edit the content and have it redirect automatically after a few seconds to my new homepage. This is obviously time consuming

any pointers
cheers

[mwinter]

Is their a script that will redirect users to my new index.html page if they are directed by a search engine to an old page address that does no longer exist.

You may have the option to issue a permanent redirect to the new document. To a user, this will be a transparent operation so you might want to note somewhere that your URL scheme has changed if the alterations are significant and pervasive. To a bot, like a search engine, a permanent redirect should cause it to remove the old address and replace it with the new one.

How you'd go about doing this depends on your server and the permissions your host has afforded you. It may also be easier to use one method over another (for example, pattern matching). You'll need to provide more information.

In any case, the use of client-side scripts (the general thrust of this particular section of DD) should be avoided.

Mike

[neilkw]

ok thanks, I'll look into that