Thread

Hi there,

I’ve just launched an EE site, which is working wonderfully. However, there are a good number of incomming links from external sites which now don’t work, due to the old site being ASP based.

These links are in the format: http://www.sundialgroup.com/woodside/conference.asp
And they end up with an error page saying

This domain is not configured for this service. Please contact the webmaster to have it enabled.

What are my options for ‘catching’ these pages and redirecting them to the corresponding new page on the website, or if not to a generic “We’ve updated our website” style page?

Thanks,

Meirion

You’ll want to use some 301 redirects, set up in the .htaccess file. Something like this:

RewriteRule ^/old_page/something.asp /new_page/on_expressionengine [L,R=301]

Search the forum and Google for “301 Redirects” and there are a ton of resources to get you started. Let me know if you need more help, I’d be glad to take a look at what you’re doing.

Thanks Ryan

I’ve used Google Webmaster tools to find all the pages on the old site with incoming external links (88 pages). I’ll make a rule for each of these pages manually and then stick those rewrite rules in the .htaccess. That won’t have a hit on site performance will it?

Also, I am using urls such as http://www.sundialgroup.com/contact_us/ which shows the template site/contact (site is the default template group). I believe this is because I don’t have a 404 template set.

Now I’m happy with this behaviour, but what it does mean is that you can go to any made up url http://www.sundialgroup.com/madeupurl/nopagehere/ and you will be served the frontpage content. Can I stop this from happening?

Thanks Ryan

I’ve used Google Webmaster tools to find all the pages on the old site with incoming external links (88 pages). I’ll make a rule for each of these pages manually and then stick those rewrite rules in the .htaccess. That won’t have a hit on site performance will it?

If I remember correctly, Apache loads the .htaccess file on every request, so if you have a huge list of redirects, it could definitely have an impact. I don’t think 88 rules would be anything noticeable, but it definitely could have an impact.

Also, I am using urls such as http://www.sundialgroup.com/contact_us/ which shows the template site/contact (site is the default template group). I believe this is because I don’t have a 404 template set.

Now I’m happy with this behaviour, but what it does mean is that you can go to any made up url http://www.sundialgroup.com/madeupurl/nopagehere/ and you will be served the frontpage content. Can I stop this from happening?

You probably need to set up a 404 Page in Global Template Preferences.

However, does that not mean that http://www.sundialgroup.com/contact_us/ will not work any more, and I will have to use http://www.sundialgroup.com/site/contact_us/ ?