[thelist] [fwd] Improving link names on huge website

[Andy Warwick]

on 2001-08-29 11:17 pm, Lucy Molinaro at lucy.molinaro at ptk.org wrote:

<snip>

> I've been learning over the years, and I've developed a convention that I
> feel comfortable with and that works well for the site. I've been
> implementing it for about a year, and in all the new pages I create, but
> throughout the site there are still pages with cumbersome, non-intuitive
> links, like http://www.ptk.org/sprogram/ampromise/ap_intro.htm.
> 
> I want to go back and "correct" these links (for instance, I'd like to
> change that link in the previous paragraph
> to  http://www.ptk.org/americaspromise/), and make them all consistent and
> more intuitive. But I also want to make sure our constitutents can still
> find these pages -- they're linked throughout the website, printed in
> publications, used on the myriad of "chapter" websites affiliated with our
> company.
> 
> I have thought about creating new pages saved under the new and improved
> file names and placing redirect scripts on the old pages. But before I
> embark on that big project (our web dept is pretty small -- one
> full-timer,
> one contract, one part-time), are there any other suggestions anyone has
> to
> offer? Any short-term suggestions, at that?

Lucy

If you are using Apache as a web server, you might want to take a look at
the redirect options.

    http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_alias.html
    http://www.engelschall.com/pw/apache/rewriteguide/

It's fairly heavy going if you are new to server stuff, but the basic idea
is that a URL of the form http://www.ptk.org/sprogram/ampromise/ap_intro.htm
is auto-magically redirected to
http://www.ptk.org/americaspromise/ap_intro.htm by the server itself, that
replaces the "sprogram/ampromise" with "americaspromise" on-the-fly and
without human intervention; no re-writing or multiple pages with different
addresses needed.

if you need any help contact me off-list.
 
Hope that helps.

Regards

-- 
Andy Warwick       

email: andy.w at creed.co.uk                      PGP ID: 0xB1D73499
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