Server-Side redirect in IIS

How to set up a server-side redirect in IIS

[Darkelve]

Hi all,

We recently launched a new website and consequently some pages got moved. I would like to redirect a couple of old pages/links that were frequently visited on the old site, to the new location. I suspect a lot of visitors have them in their bookmarks or they got it via a search engine (or the cache thereof).

Some people told me to use a http-redirect in the page itself, but when reading some more professional publications (e.g. Useit.com, ala, ...) it seems in this case a server-side redirect is more appropriate.

How can you set this up in IIS? I searched the internet and Microsofts website(s), but found no exact match. Can anyone explain or provide a link?

Thanks,

Darkelve

[IanTurner]

A number of possibilities:

If the pages are .asp you can just put

server.transfer "new_page.asp" onto the page

If the pages are not asp you can force the extension to be processed as ASP and use the server.transfer

Or you could set up a Custom 404 page to redirect to the new locations.

[Darkelve]

Hi,

thanks for the suggestions, unfortunately although the server runs asp, those pages are not ASP, but plain html.

If I 'force' the extension to be processed as asp however, what will happen to the rest of the html pages (most are plain html with a couple of asp pages for e.g. forms)?

Is there anyway to force or redirect one or more particular pages?

For some strange reason I had the impression server-side redirects would be so simple as adding lines in the webserver's configuration file?

Darkelve

[IanTurner]

forcing.htm to be processed will cause all .htm files to be processed increasing load on the server.

A custom 404 could work, if you make the 404 page a .asp page

[richlowe]

To do a server side redirect in IIS, just go into the Internet Information Services program, drill down to the object you want to redirect and open the properties. It can be a wewb site, a folder or a single page (it must exist). Under the "Directory" tab you'll see some lines that say it can be local, a URL or a share. You can set URL and make this resource go to wherever you want. I've used it often and it works. The help button here has more info.

Richard Lowe

[IanTurner]

richlowe - I thought I knew IIS until you said that!

I owe you beer in quantity

The ridiculous thing is that it is the first thing on the page, and yet my brain skips it at every viewing!

[Darkelve]

Thank you Rich! (thank you also Ian).

That will probably be able to solve a lot of problems we're currently having.

I'll pay you back the favor if I can: I'm very experienced in usability and accessibility for websites and fairly good at css, although not as good as a lot of people around here (I'm more of a content manager&strategist than a designer or developer).

Thanks for the help&the fast response. I don't know if this topic should be locked, but if it should, I don't object.

Darkelve