Problem with creating 301 redirect

Server producing 302 redirect instead

[diamondgrl]

For PHP pages that have moved, I need to permanently redirect users to new pages. That should be simple: Just return a 301 "Moved Permanently" status code via PHP's header command. However, my server oddly returns a 302 status instead.

I have PHP 4.3.6 running on IIS 6.0 (Windows 2003 Server) and have introduced the following PHP code:

<?php
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: [example.com...]
exit();
?>

This is a textbook example, repeated ad nauseum on the web, so it should work. I've tried a number of variations, as well. But my server is always returning a 302 status instead. For all of you who know about search engine optimization, you know what a problem that can be.

There appears to have been a bug in PHP 4.3.0 that caused this exact problem - the "Location" header would always mistakenly returned a 302 no matter what the code specified. It was supposedly fixed in 4.3.3. However, I've got 4.3.6 and it's doing the same thing.

Any ideas on how to solve this?

[Birdman]

You may want to try sending the Status header by itself.

<?php
header('Status: 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: ht*p://www.example.com/newurl.html');
exit();
?>

[diamondgrl]

Birdman,

Great suggestion. Done that already. Didn't work.

[orgaseo]

what about the .htaccess file?

Do you use a "ErrorPage 404 /myscript.php"?

[diamondgrl]

I use IIS from Windows Server 2003. Therefore, there is no .htaccess file.