[Sigia-l] Redirects...

[Karl Fast]

> I'm curious to know what sort of user experience details people on the 
> list have used on their redirect pages:
> - messaging to customers/users
> - how long the page is displayed before automatically redirecting to 
> the new URL
> - etc.

You need to look at this from at least two perspectives.

First, the user who finds this page and is redirected. I don't know
what to advise here since I don't have enough experience. The
biggest problem with the immediate redirect (as usually implemented)
is that it breaks the back button (go back one and you immediately
get sent forward again....ggrrrr).

Second, the robot who is crawling the page. If you move a page you
should return the proper HTTP redirection code. If you don't then
Google and Yahoo won't properly update their index. I think 301 is
the HTTP status code for "moved permanently."

I haven't had to worry about this at a technical level, but I do
know that this is a problem for the search engines. That problem
trickles down to your end user, especially if most people find your
content via a search engine.


--karl
http://www.livingskies.com/