301 Re-directs in .htaccess...(How long is long enough?)

One or two Stupid Bots still calling up old indices.

[pendanticist]

Currently, Google, Slurp and Ink are doing their respective things. Ink (et., al.) is as dysfunctionally stupid as ever and continues calling up old index files. <sigh>

301s have been in place for eleven months now, do you advise removing them?

One would think my changes would/should have worked their way through the Internet by now. Yeah?/Neah?

Is it possible that too long a time creates problems?

Note: I have a custom 404 page.

(These 301s currently take up 241 lines and 17,581 bytes all by themselves, not to mention space taken by IP Number and RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} bans...my thoughts are towards trimming my .htaccess down a tad.)

Thanks.

Pendanticist.

[Visit Thailand]

pendanticist I am afraid I cannot help but hope someone can as I also have a very large .htaccess and would like to remove the 301's. Mine have been up now for some 10 months or so I think.

[jamie]

my .htaccess is also increasing...... so would be very interested to hear someone's thoughts on length.

surely the length of the .htaccess (just like the httpd.conf) is only read on a server-side level, so can be quite big?

i too am wondering how long for a 301 is long enough. some bots just won't behave ;-)

[sugarkane]

> do you advise removing them?

I'd check two things. First, are you getting any significant traffic through the old URLs, from visitors rather than spiders? Second, are there any high PR links to the old URLs? If the answer is no to both, I'd let the custom 404 handle those cases.

As to .htaccess size, if you have the option I'd consider moving the contents to the main httpd.conf file, which would improve performance as those configuration options are stored in memory rather than read from disk with every request.

Having said that, I think in most cases the performance hit is caused by having to read .htaccess in the first place (along with each .htacess up the directory tree to document root). I'd be interested if anyone has any figures on this, but I'd have thought that unless the size gets waaay out of hand it isn't really an issue.

[jamie]

I'd check two things. First, are you getting any significant traffic through the old URLs, from visitors rather than spiders? Second, are there any high PR links to the old URLs? If the answer is no to both, I'd let the custom 404 handle those cases.

thanks sugerkane, that is nicely explained!

[pendanticist]

Yes, Thanks sugarkane.

AuthName yada, yada, yada.
AuthUserFile yada, yada, yada.
AuthGroupFile yada, yada, yada.
ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html
# Send a permanent redirect from our old file to our new file

(this is where I had alllll the redirects.)

RewriteEngine On
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} AaronCarter [NC,OR]
blah
blah
blah
blah

Is it copesetic to leave it this way?

Thanks again. :)

Pendanticist.