San Diego State University - Minds That Move the World

Web Style Guide

 

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Redirecting Your Visitors

Suppose you've just redesigned your site and in the process you've moved files around so they are better organized on your server. Great job! But don't forget that if you've moved some popular pages, you may have just broken some of your visitors' bookmarks to the old pages.

How can you make your old URLs automatically find your new pages? Use a redirect META tag.

This special META tag resides inside the <HEAD></HEAD> tag of your old html document and looks like this:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" 
CONTENT="5;URL=http://www.sdsu.edu">

The key is what is inside the unusually formatted CONTENT attribute. The "5" in the example above refers to the number of seconds to wait before sending your visitor to the new location. The URL is the address of the new page.

Sample HTML Page

Here is a sample HTML redirect page that sends the visitor to our campus home page after 10 seconds:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Page Moved</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh"
CONTENT="10;URL=http://www.sdsu.edu">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Sorry, this page has moved or no longer exists.
You will be automatically sent to our campus 
home page in 10 seconds.
If you aren't forwarded to the home page, 
click the following link:
<a href="http://www.sdsu.edu">SDSU</a>.
</BODY>
</HTML>

Be sure to include te link to the new page in the body of the document because there are a few browsers that don't support automatic forwarding. Lynx, a text only browser, is one of them.

Dreamweaver Instructions

You can also insert the META redirect tag in Dreamweaver without editing the HTML code yourself.

  1. From the Insert menu, select Head Tags>Refresh.
  2. Type in the delay desired and the new URL.
  3. Click OK.

This will insert the correct command in the <HEAD> section of the document.

Other Options

Please note that this isn't the only way to redirect visitors. You can create a symbolic link from the UNIX shell, use a CGI script or insert JavaScript code into the page. However, using a META redirect tag is the easiest and most flexible way to send your visitors to a new page.