Alerting users to URL changes

[Peter Murray]

If you are talking about doing this site-wide, we have a program that
replaces the "404 File Not Found" page with a CGI script that looks in a
configuration file for mappings of old URLs to new URLs.  Last summer we did
a reorganization of our entire server.  We are in the second of four stages
of the reorganization right now:

  August - December:  The "Be Nice" stage
    - URLs to old locations are automatically sent a 302 error message
      and a "Location:" header to the new place
    - Information maintainers on the web site are told of the URL change
      and are given this 4 month opportunity to update inter-site links
      to point to the new location and notify others to update off-site
      links.  We give them copies of the log file from the CGI to assist
      with the process.

  January - May:  The "Start To Get Annoying" stage
    - Users are sent a "404 File Not Found" message with a META REFRESH
      tag to direct them to the new location in 30 seconds.
    - The 404 File Not Found reply code from the web server means that
      search engines will stop indexing it.  The content of the HTML
      page returned tell users about the site reorganization, the
      location of the new URL, the e-mail address of the information
      maintainer, and the place where they came from (if known).
    - Images and things other than HTML files are quietly redirected 
      to the new place as in the previous phase.

  May - July:  The "We Really Mean It" stage
    - Users are sent a "404 File Not Found" message without the META
      REFRESH tag.
    - Users now *must* click on the new link to go to the new page.
    - Images, etc., are quietly redirected to the new place as in 
      the first stage.

  August: The "It Never Happened" stage
    - The redirection lines are remove from the configuration file
      and the user sees the default 404 File Not Found page.

To see an example of stage two where we are now, check out this URL:

  http://www.cwru.edu/lit/EuclidPLUS/help.html

For information about the program itself, check out:

  http://www.cwru.edu/dms/homes/pem/projects/nph-redirect.html

There are some CWRU-specific things in there, but they should be pretty easy
to remove.  This is working on our Netscape Enterprise server under Solaris,
but I believe there are other web servers that let you replace error file
with CGI scripts.


Peter

--On Thu, Jan 15, 1998 11:54 AM -0800 "Eric Rumsey"
<rumsey at blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote: 

> What do people think about different ways of alerting users to URL
changes?
> Which is better -
> 
> 1-An automatic redirect
> 2-Put a message at the old URL that has a link to the new URL, that has to
> be clicked by the user.
> 3-Combination of #1 and #2 - Old URL has link to new, and says something
> like "Click here if you are not automatically redirected after a few
> seconds."
> 
> I lean to #2, so that users are made aware of the new address, so they can
> change their bookmarks and links.



--
Peter Murray, Library Systems Manager                    pem at po.cwru.edu
Digital Media Services                 http://www.cwru.edu/home/pem.html
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio          W:216-368-5888