Before CLiX Network was launched I had various articles and how tos on my other websites. Now because CLiX Network is your place to find information you want, I figured it would be smart to put all the articles in one place. But then what do I do with the other copies of the articles?
Well that is where this article comes in. I’m going to show you how I redirected all those other articles here with simple .htaccess files. I’ll also discuss some other cool things you can do with these redirects.
Why .htacccess?
Well with .htaccess it is easy, and you can set the redirects as permanent. I want search engines and crawlers to know that the page isn’t coming back ever, and to always consider the article on this site now and not the others.
Let’s do it
You’ll want to open up notepad and start getting all the URLs together. The syntax is simple:
Redirect permanent /oldpage.html http://mysite.com/newpage.html
When I made mine, I just copied and pasted “Redirect permanent ” a bunch of times into notepad, then one by one I copied the RELATIVE urls of the old articles, and put the full path of the new articles like so:
Redirect permanent /articles/2_How_do_Exchanges_prevent_cheating.php http://www.clixnetwork.com/2005/3/15_howdoexchangespreven.html
Redirect permanent /articles/3_Google_Page_Rank_in_Plain_English.php http://www.clixnetwork.com/2005/3/13_googlepagerankinplai.html
Redirect permanent /articles/4_Windows_XP_Adware_Removal.php http://www.clixnetwork.com/2005/3/16_windowsxpadwareremov.html
Redirect permanent /articles/5_Install_PHP_Scripts_Yourself.php http://www.clixnetwork.com/2005/3/17_installphpscriptsyou.html
Other Options
If you just moved something temporarily, or you want to tell the engine that the page is no longer there and its not coming back so stop listing it in the results, you can do that too. Instead of permanent, you can use any of the following keywords:
permanent - the resource has moved permanently temp - it has temporarily moved elsewhere seeother - the resource has been replaced gone - it has been permanently removed
Here are some examples:
Redirect temp /article2.html http://www.mysite.com/imrewritingthis.html
Redirect seeother /article3.html http://www.mystie.com/betterarticle.html
Redirect gone /realyold.html
As you can see you have some flexability here. So now that you know this, remember to add a .htaccess entry every time you move or delete a page. It takes time, but it will help search engines and crawlers know what is going on with your site.