Forum Moderators: phranque
I have this stuborn client with a poor brand : z-poor-keyword.com . I want to bait and switch some directories that still use alphabetical order to sort listings with a-good-keyword.com. The home page will proeminently show the later title untill the site gets listed. Then we will switch to z-poor-keyword.com wich will be used to promote the site on traditional media. At all times z-poor-keyword.com will be redirected with a 301 to a-good-keyword.com.
Later, some external sites will probably use z-poor-keyword.com to link to the site. I want to track those too for attempting to correct the links. I am not currently able to see referrers of such in the logfiles. Is it possible to include them in the destination log on a *nix server?
Yes and no. :) Assuming we're talking about an Apache server, it is possible to set up custom log files to show redirects, details are here [apacheweek.com], see Advanced Configuration Options. You could do this if you ran your own server, but it's very unlikely that a commercial host will permit or provide custom logs. Also, it appears commercial hosts could only permit custom logs on virtual domains, not on domains with a dedicated IP.
He eh! Not beeing familiar with server stuff makes it a double language challenge for me. Still glad I posted this in the right forum. ;)
Thanks DaveAtIFG,
That pretty covers it. So, if the (already very collaborative) commercial host is using virtual domains, sites linking to z-poor-keyword.com will show up in logs of a-good-keyword.com?
sites linking to z-poor-keyword.com will show up in logs of a-good-keyword.comNot quite. Your host COULD configure his server to log redirects for a virtual domain. It's probably not set up to do this now, because it's a non-standard configuration. He will need to revise the server's configuration file. My earlier post includes a link discussing those revisions.
