Options for 301 redirects

Forum Moderators: phranque

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Options for 301 redirects

without htaccess or PHP

wesg

8:05 pm on Oct 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

I'm part of a university team, and I have been given webmaster responsibilities. We're transitioning from a school-hosted site to a standard hosted site with all the gadgets.

The problem is that I want to redirect the old site to the new one, but the school hosting space does not support PHP (phpinfo() returns the source code) or htaccess (I tried a 301 redirect and nothing happened). What other options do I have? Is there a way to test for htaccess other than what I did? I can do Javscript, but I've heard that's not recommended for healthy SEO.

phranque

11:24 pm on Oct 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

when you say "nothing happened" are you saying you got no response whatsoever?
what did you try in your .htaccess file?
did you check the server logs for clues?

wesg

12:11 am on Oct 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

the address is example.com/~user/ so I put

Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com/

where example.com is my new address. I also tried a few more combinations with and without the leading slash, and neither worked. But since I used files that didn't exist, i'm going to try using a file that exists first.

UPDATE: I just tried with a file that exists and it still didn't work.

phranque

12:29 am on Oct 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

maybe you don't have mod_alias installed.
you should still be able to find some clues in the log files.
or try using apache mod_rewrite directives instead.

vincevincevince

12:34 am on Oct 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

Perhaps the site is on a Windows server? Check server headers. If so, you can use IIS directives or ASP code for your header redirects.

encyclo

12:50 am on Oct 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

Maybe with an index.asis [webmasterworld.com]? (That will redirect the home page only).

Otherwise, can you simply switch the DNS and point the old domain name or subdomain to a server with scripting or rewrite capabilities, or are you talking about a subdirectory within a university site?

wesg

2:04 am on Oct 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

It's a subdomain within a university site, which is why we're moving to a regular host. They didn't offer much customization, as you can tell. I'm going to see what else I can find out from the admins.

phranque

5:00 am on Oct 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

as vincevincevince suggested you should first check your HTTP Response headers to see what the Server: header contains.

wesg

9:20 pm on Oct 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

Well, I resorted to Javascript because the admins for the site doesn't seem to be able to add htaccess or PHP support due to security. I think I can rebuild the SEO by updating the current links to the site, though. Thanks for everyone's help!

mayest

7:05 pm on Oct 17, 2008 (gmt 0)

wesg, I faced the same problem a year ago on my university site. I wanted to take a portion of it and place it on its own domain. My university uses some ancient server technology that doesn't support much of anything. I had to use the JavaScript redirects and it worked just fine. The new domain was getting traffic immediately, and the PR transferred in a couple of months.