[WEB4LIB] Deep Linking

[george at library.caltech.edu]

Thomas Dowling has held forth on the topic of moving pages and site redesign
a number of times on Web4Lib over the years.  Here is a disquisition from
1999 <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/archive/9912/0069.html> with
recommended time frames for the "change your bookmarks" and for establishing
301 -- Permanently Moved status.

If a website redesign is not cosmetic, which wouldn't require any redirects,
but wholesale shuffling of the file naming and directory system, the
organization may want to consider whether there is truly a compelling need
to do so.  If the level of need (not desire or impulse) overwhelms the
additional work required to create a new system AND prevent users from being
stranded by setting up the appropriate redirects, then it would be
reasonable to pursue such a course of action.

With respect to external links to a site, it is not that difficult to use a
variety of web search engines to identify in-bound links to a site or a
specific page.  Likewise, reviewing the server logs for referring pages
outside of the website is an excellent approach to finding the links which
most need to be updates.  Using either, preferably both, approach, then
contact the website maintainers and notify them of the new locations and ask
that their links be updated accordingly.  In the best case, this would be
done by creating the new website and operating it in parallel for some
period of time, allowing for a graceful transition, as laid out in Thomas's
message.

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
Caltech, 1-43
Pasadena, CA  91125-4300
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681