Simple 301 question

Need answer to a 301 redirect question

[Tyme]

I have a page with content that needs to move to a new folder on my site. But the content will be updated with some new stuff and therefore the page will change. The question is how long do I need to keep the old content page on the server? Do I delete the old page after the 301 is in place?

[mack]

Once you have the 301 in place you can remove the old location because it will not be seen by users of bots. The redirect will send all traffic to the new location.

Mack.

[rocknbil]

A small caveat, **just last week** I encountered a situation on a domain that I have never seen in my life, ever.

What mack says is completely true, however in this weird environment it failed. It supported mod_rewrite, so in the completed site redesign I added 301 RewriteRules from dumb-filename.htm to descriptive-rich-filename.html.

When I deleted the old files, the server returned a forbidden message, as if I were requesting a directory with no index.html (or something.) The mod_rewrites only worked when I put the old files (sans content) back in place. With the files in place, I checked server headers and it accurately redirected with a 301. Delete the files, error.

Weirdest thing I'd ever seen, but it was shared hosting and I had limited access to chase down the why.

[mack]

Sounds like a strange server configuration. Almost as if it was checking the old location and giving an error if they didn't exist.

Mack.

[jdMorgan]

rocknbil,

Disable MultiViews (mod_negotiation) and AcceptPathInfo if your site doesn't require them.

These functions can take precedence over mod_rewrite, and "rewrite" the requested URLs before mod_rewrite gets a chance to execute, likely mapping them to folders with the -Indexes option set in your case, resulting in a 403.

Jim