[Web4lib] reorganizing a web site

[Richard Wiggins]

Total site redesigns often mean total link rot: the site team chooses
a new naming convention, and instantly obsoletes hundreds or thousands
of URLs the instant the new site goes live.  This can be avoided.

When Michigan State University reorganized our main Web presence,
www.msu.edu, a couple of years ago, we kept the old site online, and
built a smart Error 404 handler that traverses the old site to see if
any given URL works for the old path.

The goal was zero link rot.  Users specifying an old URL had to make
one more click, but they could still find the old pages -- and they
were notified that the page they sought could be obsolete.

We're now in the midst of another site redesign, so we will likely
drop the old site, but I expect we will follow a similar process.

/rich