[Sigia-l] URLs must live forever? Poor man's content negotiation?

[Art Ludwig]

John, Dianne

I got the 404 program up and running.

I can't remember the last time I was so excited. Thanks for suggesting this.

To see it in action, try <http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/greywater.htm>

(it should take you automatically to the new address,
<http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/index.htm >

Then try
<http://www.oasisdesign.net/redirectest.htm>

As this is an URL which doesn't correspond to any page on our site and
is not on the redirect list, it should take you to
<http://www.oasisdesign.net/404.htm>, our custom
404 page.

The only place I see for improvements is in the log file.

My ideal log file would read like this:

**************
Summary-successful redirects

Bad url 1,Good URL 1, ##, 1st date, last date
Bad url 2,Good URL 2, ##, 1st date, last date
**************
Summary-unsuccessful redirects

Really bad url 1,404, ##
Really bad url 2,404, ##
Really bad url 3,404, ##

**************
Details-successful redirects

Bad url,Good URL, date & time
Bad url,Good URL, date & time
**************
Details-unsuccessful redirects

Really bad url 1, date & time
Really bad url 1, date & time
Really bad url 2, date & time
Really bad url 3, date & time

**************

Where
+bad url =URL of a request leading to a successful redirect
+good URL = new address it mapped to
+## is the total number of times this identical mapping occurred over the life
of the log
file
+1st date is the date of the first such redirect
+last date is the date of the most recent such redirect
+Really bad url url= URI of a request leading to the 404 page (no forwarding
address)
+Details =the events consolidated into the summary.  Date and time of each
incident would be the only added info here.

The whole thing should have commas or something so it dumps cleanly into a
spreadsheet.

In the spreadsheet,

+sort it by bad url ##, and you've got a ranked list of urls to search on to
request that other webmasters update their links.

You could also use this list to re-sort your redirect.txt file, so that the
most commonly accessed urls were at the top, speeding things up by a few
microseconds if you've got a long redirects list.

+sort it by really bad url ##, and you've got a ranked list of urls to add to
your redirect list.

+sort it by bad url last date, and you've got a ranked list of urls you can
take off your list.

John, it sounded like you could use such an improvement to the log function at
your site. Might you be interested in sharing the cost of getting such a thing
programmed for both our sites?

Yours,

Art