redirect a site cleanly without 301

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redirect a site cleanly without 301

no access to htaccess fil

kelly001

7:03 pm on Feb 4, 2004 (gmt 0)

I need to redirect users to a new site which is now hosted with it's own domain name on a new server. Before that the old site was on a free webserver storage place hosted by an ISP (rcn.com) I don't have access to the htaccess so I can't do a 301 redirect.
What is an alternative way to redirect users and search engines in a clean way?

thanks!

xbase234

10:21 pm on Feb 4, 2004 (gmt 0)

The cleanest method will involve running a 301.

You can request that the host set the domain as a 301 (they may charge for this service, nominal one-time fee is fair), or you can transfer the domain to another host that will give you access to set up the redirect. There are also many low cost hosting providers that offer a control panel with redirect capabilities if you can't access the server directly.

kelly001

10:44 pm on Feb 4, 2004 (gmt 0)

rcn.com provide the free web space as is and won't administer any 301 redirect. It's not worth their time... They don't even allow you to point your domain name towards your free web space.
The only changes I can make are to my html files. I know the meta refresh tag is often used by spammers so mislead users and as such not well perceived by google. So I don't want to resort to that alternative either.

xbase234

11:34 pm on Feb 4, 2004 (gmt 0)

Transfer the DNS on the old domain to the host of your new domain, and ask the new host to run the 301 redirect.

Do you just want to run one redirect, or are there multiple pages within the domain to redirect?

nakulgoyal

7:02 am on Feb 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

Considering the benefit, it's best in your favor to move your host.

kelly001

1:46 pm on Feb 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

Don't have access to DNS it's a free web space from RCN. There's no personal domain name associated with it.
Just a generic users.rcn.com/blablah/index.html

xbase234

5:43 pm on Feb 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

For sites running on IIS, you can put a few lines code on the page to run a 301, but rcn.com appears to be running on Apache.

Any Apache experts know if it is possible to code a 301 on a individual HTML page, as referenced above?

robho

10:07 pm on Feb 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

Are you able to run a script (perl or php) on the old server? That could be used to do a 301 redirect.

sidyadav

10:36 pm on Feb 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

Heres a JavaScript/HTML code for a simple re-direct (its not a 301):

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">

</script>
</head>
<body onLoad="redirectionTimer()">
</BODY>
</HTML>

I'm sure you can run JavaScript on any server which allows HTML (every server does - duh!).

And also - I'm running the script on several websites - Google follows the re-direct.

Hope this helps,
Sid

kelly001

4:09 pm on Feb 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

Are you able to run a script (perl or php) on the old server? That could be used to do a 301 redirect.

No I can't... this is the same as using a tripod or whatever other free web space except it didn't have the annoying ads.

xbase234

4:27 pm on Feb 6, 2004 (gmt 0)

sidya - could you run a header check and determine the status of the header for the page utilizing the code you provided above (200, 301, 302, etc.)? I would be interested to know which status code is returned.

Does anyone have code that will send a *301 Permanent* redirect initiated from an HTML file (javascript or other).