I am currently developing a site which is soon to be relaunched.  However, currently there are numerous outside links to a page called bibwel.html but we will replace this page with bibwel.asp to accommodate the web wiz mailing list manager.

Therefore we need to incorporate a seamless redirect somewhere (we are running off a Windows 2000 server).  I know that we could simply still use the html page and add a link but I'm sure there must be an automatic redirect so that the user doesn't even realise that they're being redirected.

Can anyone help?  Would be grateful for any tips.  Thanks.

Hello,

Try this page http://www.ringyding.net/redirect.html - http://www.ringyding.net/redirect.html

This will redirect you to Google after 20 seconds. While you are waiting for the page to redirect you can grab the source code to see how it's done.

You can change the time to zero. Change the target. Remove all the text so the page displays nothing before the redirect.

DL

javaengines.dk wrote: You should set at least a small timer on your redirection page, else the back button will not work past the redirection. This is something that really pisses me off when I see it :)

That's why there is a history selector between the arrows, for you to choose how far back you want to go.

Personally, I like server-side redirection better. Things like that should be transparent to users unless they are specifically expecting a set URL or the content is expected and the new page has something different. e.g. A client-side redirection should only be used for notification purposes, which often is unnecessary.

As I understand this there is a page called bibwel.html with numerous links from other sites pointing to it so when someone uses an outside link they will be requesting the page bibwell.html

If you delete the page bibwel.html and replace it with bibwel.asp then when someone uses an outside link then they will get a  "404 page can't be found error"

If you put the asp code into the bibwel.html page to use the server side redirect it won't work because bibwel.html is not an active server page so all you will get is a blank screen and nothing will happen because the html page will just see the <%....%> as some unknown tag and ignore it.

Try this link and view the source code to see what I mean http://www.ringyding.net/redirect2.html - http://www.ringyding.net/redirect2.html

Thanks for this.  Yes, I had wondered about the viability using this server side redirect for the reasons you say - ie. you can't use the code in an html page.  Therefore, I've opted for the simple solution now in use at http://www.rhs.ac.uk/bibwel.html - www.rhs.ac.uk/bibwel.html

Thanks for all the advice.

No problem.

It works a treat.

Me, I just love the simple solutions

DL

I'm a bit slow on the reply here... anyways... Forget what everyone else says - make it sexy~!

Server-side still works better - file extensions etc. are irrelevant. Try one of these:

Method #1

1) Go into Internet Information Services
2) Expand the web site
3) Right click on the properties for the file you want redirection for
4) In the File tab select "A redirection to a URL"
5) Enter the URL in the "Redirect to:" input field.
6) Select "The exact URL entered above"
7) Click Apply

This will redirect for the one file that you want, and people's bookmarks will still work.

Method #2

1) Go into IIS
2) Right click on the web site and select Properties
3) Click the Home Directory tab
4) Click Configuration near the bottom
5) Click the App Mappings tab (selected by default)
6) Click Add
7) Browse to and select asp.dll (It should be in C:\WINNT\system32\inetsrv)
8) Click Open
9) Enter "html" (Or anything you want, e.g. bluefrog for "index.bluefrog")
10) Select the "Limit to:" and enter "GET, POST, HEAD, TRACE"
11) Check "Script engine" and "Check that file exists"
12) Click OK.

That will let you run *.html or *.htm or *.I_am_drop_dead_sexy_-_Look_at_my_sexy_body as *.asp files.

Abuse this knowledge in good health~! And just remember, Bluefrog has the original 110% pure sexy asp~!

Cheers

Unless you are spending a great deal of time worrying about what search engines do, I wouldn't go for users clicking. It's just an annoyance for them. If you have a very high traffic site, then you may need to worry about that. However, actually getting high in search engine ranking is extremely difficult and expensive.

You mentioned that numerous people link from other sites... which means that they will be using the GET method, and hence not HEAD.

The specification states:

10.3.2 301 Moved Permanently

      Note: When automatically redirecting a POST request after
      receiving a 301 status code, some existing HTTP/1.0 user agents
      will erroneously change it into a GET request.