Re: Header Redirect

On 27 May 2008, at 17:54, Robert Cummings wrote:

On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 17:10 +0100, Stut wrote:

On 27 May 2008, at 17:06, Yui Hiroaki wrote:

I would like to have some question. For example, I am in http://example.com/?12324242 I would like to REDIRECT from http://example.com/?1312323232 to http://example.com/ I can REDIRECT from http://example.com/index.php to http://example.com Please do tell me how I can redirect! This is the sample what I test below! <?php if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == '/index.php') { header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http:///example.com/"); exit(); } ?>

1) Why? Redirects should be avoided where possible for performance reasons.

Didn't this topic get covered several months back. I always do redirects so as not to bugger browser history, titles, indexing, etc. If someone requests a page and they need to be logged in, I redirect to the login page, I never just present the login page... that's just incorrect from

Personally I tend to only use redirects when a form handler has done it's job to avoid evil messages when the user hits back. However, I have used both redirected and non-redirected login workflows in the past for various reasons, and I don't believe there is a "standard" way to do it. It depends on how the site will be used and by whom.

a hierarchical and semantic point of view. Similarly, if I'm doing 404 handling with fuzzy request sniffing to determine what was actually requested, I again perform a redirect once I've ascertained what was probably desired. If you don't, then Google and other search engines will index these malformed URLs instead of the correct URL.

The correct response to a 404 page is 404. No arguments. If you redirect missing pages then your site effectively contains an infinite number of pages. By all means display a useful page when you return your 404 but not marking it as a missing page does little if anything for your SEO rank and absolutely nothing for your users. IMHO if you're going to use a semantic argument to defend one point you need to carry that attitude throughout. -Stut -- http://stut.net/