tedster - 8:27 pm on Sep 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

As for 301 redirects, I thought that was only possible with Apache servers using .htaccess files.

IIS Servers also do 301 redirects natively - even without ISAPI Rewrite. That must be the case, or else a third party plug-in couldn't make it happen. In fact, even without admin level access to the IIS Internet Services Manager, you could still do a page by page 301 redirect using VBScript.

However, without ISAPI Rewrite installed and the luxury of their interface, IIS makes it very difficult to do the exact kind of rules-based redirecting that we're talking about.

I fully agree that a 301 redirect from https to http would be better than a 404 for the old incorrect protocol urls. But you need the tools to make it practical.