[Mailman-Users] help files

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/29/2008 08:29 PM, Taylor, Grant wrote:
> I'm sure that it's not only Mailman that has been hurt by the changed 
> URLs.  Besides, I'd be very tempted to set up 302, or better 301, 
> redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs.  That way if /anyone/ does 
> accidentally enter the old URL they are redirected to where they should 
> be.  Optionally for pages that merged or split, they could put a 
> disambiguating page (like Wikipedia) allowing people to choose where 
> they want to go.

Seeing as how both Stephen and Adam have mentioned redirects, I figured 
I'd add some more information.

If the web server is running Apache and / or PHP, it would be trivial to 
create a new (sub)directory / structure that behaves much like TinyURL 
in that it would be something along the lines of redirecting URLs like 
"<URL>/<(sub)directory>/links/<link_ID>" (using URL re-writing) or 
"<URL>/<(sub)directory>/links?linkID=<link_ID>" (no URL re-writing) to a 
final destination.

Using either method (URL rewriting or not) it would be trivial to create 
a two column database that has the requested URL and the redirect to URL 
to query and generate a redirection from.  (If need be I can put 
together some example code to do this.)

The only thing that comes to mind that would be a problem is when 
content either merges or splits across individual files.  In this case, 
you would need some sort of landing page for visitors to decide where 
they want to go.  A sign post for the fork in the road, if you will.



Grant. . . .