Adios Means Goodbye – Browser 301 Redirects In All Languages

By David Walsh on August 30, 2007

Browser redirects, especially 301 "permanent" redirects, are essential to all good web applications. Regardless of language, browser redirects can:

provide safe URL forwarding to gather GET and POST variables and process them without risking data and processing integrity by a browser refresh
send users and search engine bots to the new location of a page or entire website
maintain search engine rank and avoid 404 errors

Here's the list of browser redirects using various languages:

.htaccess

redirect 301 / http://www.davidwalsh.name/

Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently";
Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.davidwalsh.name/");

<CFHEADER statuscode="301" statustext="Moved Permanently">
<CFHEADERname="Location" value="http://www.davidwalsh.name">

//window.location.href = 'http://www.davidwalsh.name/';

response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader("Location", "http://www.davidwalsh.name/");
response.setHeader("Connection", "close");

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.davidwalsh.name/" />

use strict;
print "Status: 301 Moved Permanantlyn";
print "Location: http://www.davidwalsh.name";
exit;

header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: http://www.davidwalsh.name');

def old_action
headers["Status"] = "301 Moved Permanently"
redirect_to "http://www.davidwalsh.name/"
end

Do you have any more redirect scripts? If so, post them below!

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Winikkach
I’m most comfortable with php and asp, but what happens when you’ve been coding straight html (index.html), and you move to a new domain? How do you not lose search engine ranking when you have to use asp or php for your 301 redirect? Isn’t search engine ranking based on the actual page (not the domain)?

Did I shoot myself in the foot by having done all the SEP for my *.html pages, or can a simple move to default.asp with the redirect work?

There’s one other proposition, and that’s that I’m missing something entirely here (like some code to put on the server that does the redirect for me).

Could someone help me out here?
mauricio
hi all:

I’m using the php redirect statements, but got error: “Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /hermes/bosweb/web058/b580/sl.poolspahelpercom/public_html/contact.php:10) in /hermes/bosweb/web058/b580/sl.poolspahelpercom/public_html/contact.php on line 82”

line 10 is where the tag starts at

line 82 is where the header(‘HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
and line 83 is where
header(‘Location: http://poolspahelper.com/index.html‘);
are located at

How do I solve that?

Thanks
mauricio
…correction to my previous post, missing tag &lt head &gt in line 10, hope this time goes out well