pre-emptive strike or not?

Should I enter all the canonical redirection rules before it happens?

[Wayder]

I am creating a new site and I was wondering if I should pre-emptive strike to ensure canonical URL's.

I will block bots and IP's that I don't want hanging around, but I was wondering if I should go the whole hog and insert all those 301 redirects before I start to get bad uri's.

Opinions pls.

Ray...

[jdMorgan]

Of course you should. However, I'm not sure why you say "all those rules." Most sites only need a few canonicalization rules, and your prior awareness of "what could go wrong" can be used to inform your URL architecture and your filesystem layout.

Sometimes I have to spend extra time on researching problems posted here, and occasionally even have to ask to 'peek' inside someone else's server. This is because I've never put up a site without *everything* I could think of already in place in the infrastructure. Phrases such as "A stitch in time saves nine," and "Fore-warned is fore-armed" come to mind.

Jim

[Wayder]

Darn, that was fast...

Time to get my thinking cap on and collect all my rules together.

Thank you.

[g1smd]

I start designing the URL structure before any of the pages and scripts are even coded.

The rules for .htaccess are crafted to force canonicalisation for every URL variant that I can think of, way before the site goes live.