Summary: relocating a set of docs

Fri Dec 6 10:20:41 EST 1996

Thanks to all who offered advice on this question. Attached are excepts from the
replies received. 

The new URL for the Santa Fe Public Library is official: 
                http://www.ci.santa-fe.nm.us/sfpl/

Miriam Bobkoff           
         mbobkoff at ci.santa-fe.nm.us
Santa Fe Public Library                        personal: mbobkoff at rt66.com
145 Washington Avenue                          http://www.rt66.com/~mbobkoff/  
Santa Fe, NM 87501       (505)984-6832          

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

>Am I right in thinking I should leave a referring URL in a dummy file in
>place of _each_ file, (or only for index.html and certain other major files?)

Have you asked your old ISP if they can add a 'redirect' line to their web
server configuration file? This is a one-liner their system administrator
adds, and then any requests to their server containing your old URL are
instantly redirected to the new one. Saves you lots of work.

>Will index robots start finding the new pages right away, whether I'm ready
>or not, so I should try to move, test, and leave referring files behind more
>or less all at once?

When you're ready, you can go to the big 10 or so search engines and ask
them to start indexing your new URL. You can also turn off robot/spider
visits to your OLD site by installing a simple robots.txt file, containing
a simple "get lost!" message. There is a web document called "standard for
robot exclusion" that explains how to format this one-liner.
                                          Sean Dreilinger, MLIS
        PGP Public Key - http://www.kensho.com/sean/pubring.htm
  sean at kensho.com - 619.514.3939 - http://www.kensho.com/~sean/
KENSHO - Bringing Knowledge to the Information Age - in a Flash

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

You may want to consider the use of PURLs (see http://purl.org).  Your 
housekeeping will be considerably simpler.

Yours truly,

 --Erik

Erik Jul
jul at oclc.org

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

Just a thought, but you might what to leave the old pages up in toto for a
week or two before you replace them with crossreference pages.  

Also, I have been told (but don't know how to accomplish) that the old web
server can be set to "catch" all subordinate requests for URLs and respond
with the single crossreferencing page.

	Thaddeus P. Bejnar  work mail:  thaddeus at mail.supct.state.nm.us
***************************************************************************

I would encourage you to leave a referring URL for _every_ page you leave
behind.  It can be the same file for every address (pointing to the new
home page) if this makes it easier.  When I don't do this, I lose viewers
(according to my log file).  When someone sees that the site is not at one
address, most will not try to track the right address down, IMO.

> Am I right that I should track down all the places where the old URL is
> listed and notify them of the new one?

It depends how long you leave up the referring URL pages.  Of course,
anything that gets people the pages faster will increase the likelyhood
that they will actually look at the pages.  It is also good advertising to
remind people that you exist.

If you want to find out who links to your pages, create a referer log.
Ask your system administrator how to do this.  If your server does not do
this and you want to see who links to your pages (and also are indexed on
AltaVista), you can go to AltaVista and type host:http://yourdomain.gov
Other web engines may also have this feature.

> Will index robots start finding the new pages right away, whether I'm ready
> or not, so I should try to move, test, and leave referring files behind more
> or less all at once?

Each robot is different and revisits sites at different time periods
(sometimes never).  The only way to get your pages reindexed right away is
to resubmit the URLs.  Don't worry about people finding your unfinished
pages- you can always put a construction sign up and not link it until it
is complete.

> Is there anything you can think of that I seem to have overlooked?

This is a great time to evaluate your directory structure.  If you are
going to change the names or places of your directories and files, do it
now!

Irene (formerly of Santa Fe) Owen
iowen at u.washington.edu
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~iowen
UW Environmental Health Library  http://weber.u.washington.edu/~dehlib

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

My suggestion is to not leave a dummy file for each page instead leave a
redirect page for just the major pages AND edit your ERROR.HTML page so
that when someone connects to an incorrect page it will give them the URL
to go to.  I think that this may be a little more efficient then creating a
dummy page for every moved page.  (Does this make sense?)

>Am I right that I should track down all the places where the old URL is
>listed and notify them of the new one?

Its a good idea to do this but don't expect to have it finished in a
day....and don't expect to find every incorrectly linked page.  I would
suggest that you should at least visit avery major directory and search
engine and provide them with the new correct information.

>Is there anything you can think of that I seem to have overlooked?

Double check every single link on your site once it is in the new location.
Often links can be overlooked that were not changed when the move took
place.  If you had been using relative URLs instead of absolute URLs this
chore will be very easy.  Otherwise you'll have to find every link that
points through your personal ISP account.  (Does this make sense?)

Hal Kirkwood
Information Technology Librarian
S.U.N.Y. at Geneseo
Geneseo, NY 14454
716/245-5524
Fax: 716/245-5003
hkirk at uno.cc.geneseo.edu
http://137.238.9.12/~hal/hal.html

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

  you could add the following to the old pages
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" Content="1; URL=http://new.url.here">

what the above does is waits a second and loads the new.url.com
<<
<<Am I right that I should track down all the places where the old URL is
<<listed and notify them of the new one?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
  If you do the meta stuff above, that would not be necessary.

<<
<<Will index robots start finding the new pages right away, whether I'm ready
<<or not, so I should try to move, test, and leave referring files behind more
<<or less all at once?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><
  After you have moved, notify a major search service like alta vista
  waiting on the spiders might take some time.
  later
  dan 
  dmahone at unm.edu

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