Multiple redirect levels?

Can they flow from one to another?

[pgrote]

Hello ... I was wondering about the Redirect command. On my site I have redirects set up from a time when I changed my software. For instance:

Redirect permanent /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/folder/newpage.html

This has been sent since 2004.

I am contemplating changing the CMS I use, which means the pages will be renamed again. I need to keep the old redirects in since I have hundreds of links coming to the old pages still.

Can I just set up another redirect right after the first?

Redirect permanent /oldpage.html http://www.example.com/folder/newpage.html
Redirect permanent /folder/newpage.html http://www.example.com/newcmspage.html

From a technical standpoint will this work? If not, what should I do?

From a search engine standpoint will they follow the second Redirect?

Thanks!

[jdMorgan]

In addition to redirecting your /folder/newpage pages to your new cms pages, how about redirecting the oldpage.html pages straight to the new cms pages as well?

Redirect permanent /oldpage.html [b]http://www.example.com/newcmspage.html[/b]
Redirect permanent /folder/newpage.html http://www.example.com/newcmspage.html

If that's feasible from a URL-mapping standpoint, that's the redirect method I would recommend.

Search engines have problems following one redirect from time-to-time. I wouldn't recommend trying to feed them two in a row. Not because two in a row should be a problem, but because they occasionally fail to handle even a single one properly. Both Google and Yahoo, in the past year or so, have have to address 301 and 302 problems, and we have a lot of posts here at WebmasterWorld about these problems.

Anther solution would be to dispense with the new redirects entirely, leave your old redirects in place, and then use mod_rewrite to internally rewrite the /folder/newpage URLs to the format needed by your new CMS. There is no reason to change the URLs unless you really want to, since mod_rewrite can map any URL to any server filepath, and the client (browser or robot) need know even know about it. This would avoid the 90 day slump in rankings you could expect from changing the URLs.

Jim