smart redirect 301

Is it possible to redirect with delay, like meta-refresh?

[ganga]

I have to redirect users permanently to a new location. I know that it is easy to do "301 Moved Permanently" within .htaccess or with php script. Only problem is that I don't want to keep this redirect forewer. I can keep it for about 4 months, or until spiders, crawlers etc. make search engines aware of the URL change. But how about the people who bookmarked it. If they will be transparently redirected they may never notice that URL has been changed. It is not good enough to notify them postfactum, or after they have been redirected. I need to do it before redirection.

Right now I have index.html page with meta-refresh tag which allows to set delay before users redirected. This way users can read message that URL has been changed. At the same time I don't like meta-refresh option, because website search engine reankings will go down.
Is that possible to do something in between and satisfy both - search engines AND users who need to be notified about the URL change?

Maybe it is possible to write php function (some kind of "if, else") which makes distinction between crawlers and regular browser request.

Ganga

[leadegroot]

Try this:
Do the 301 for that 4 months, to get the bots to the new location, and new bookmarks.
Then, after that period, remove the redirect, recreate the page with a html redirect message and block bots from it in the robots.txt file.
That should have the best of both worlds.