Types of Redirects
There are two ways of creating a redirect:
- http://siteA.cornell.edu/url1 -> http://siteB.cornell.edu/url1
- http://siteA.cornell.edu/url1 -> http://siteB.cornell.edu/url2
In the first example any URL that ends with "url1" will go to "url1" on the new site. In the second example any request to siteA will always go to "url2" on siteB.
A typical use of "1" type of redirect would be: http://myoldname.cornell.edu -> http://newname.cornell.edu where the content on "myoldname" and "newname" is identical.
A use of "2" type of redirect would be where you have a substantial amount of changes and you may want to redirect the user to a page that alerts them about changes, i.e. http://oldsite.cornell.edu -> http://newsite.cornell.edu/welcome-oldsite-users.html
Creating "1" Redirect
This is can be created by create a ".htaccess" file that contains:
Redirect / http://siteB.cornell.edu/
Make sure to have a trailing slash!
The ".htaccess" should be placed in the "DocumentRoot" of the site. This is typically the same directory that would contain the "index.html", "index.cfm", "index.php", etc... that contains the content of http://siteA.cornell.edu/
.
Create "2" Redirect
This is can be created by create a ".htaccess" file that contains:
RewriteEngine On RewriteRule .* http://siteB.cornell.edu/url2
The ".htaccess" should be placed in the "DocumentRoot" of the site. This is typically the same directory that would contain the "index.html", "index.cfm", "index.php", etc... that contains the content of http://siteA.cornell.edu/.