1 Sensible

All common sense stuff, but it’s best to think about this stuff before you redisgn a site so this might save many thousands of web designers sleepless nights.

There are certainly some aspects I hadn’t considered and the “80/20” is always a good one to remember. I need to remember that sometimes…

posted at 04:15 am on November 14, 2003 by Michael Ward

2 agree

agreed with the above – all common sense. Sadly though not everyone sits down and plans steps like those until after doing a rm -r ;)

posted at 04:27 am on November 14, 2003 by D K

3 ALA 1.0 circa 1998–99.

You must get those huge funktastic title graphics back again!

Yeah, I’ve read you’re “consciously breaking past brand associations”, but those titles were unique, no matter how good Trebuchet looks these days…

posted at 04:37 am on November 14, 2003 by manuel razzari

4 Seamless Redirects?

“Seamless redirects ensured that people following old links would wind up in the right place.”

This is probably a fairly dumb question, but can anyone give me a pointer on how to approach / where to do some reading about these seamless redirects – is it javascript on the old pages or something more intelligent?

posted at 04:47 am on November 14, 2003 by K C

5 Re: Seamless Redirects

There are a number of ways to perform redirects, from using javascript, to custom error pages using server side scripting, to using Apache tools like mod_rewrite.

I can’t speak to what was done for ALA, but the basic theory for using custom error pages involves pointing all requests for pages that don’t exist to a custom error page. That error page usually has some server side scripting that checks what page was requested, checks to see if that content exists currently, redirects if possible, and if not provides a best-guess about what the user was looking for. A good example of this is at php.net, where if you type http://www.php.net/mysql_connect you go directly to a manual page, but if you type http://www.php.net/mysql_c you get a list of functions that might be what you were looking for.

For sites that have as much content as ALA, using a database lookup that correlates old content to new content works very well. This isn’t the only way though. Apache’s mod_rewrite (assuming you have control over your Apache configuration) can be given a correlation chart and be made to do the redirects. This can also allow the web server to send appropriate error codes, letting the client know if the content is missing, has been permanently moved, etc. One issue that then comes into play though is which method is the best use of your resources, as it’s my understanding that mod_rewrite can be a work intensive method for the web server.

The bottom line: there are many ways to achieve the results Zeldman mentions in his article. Using some of the keywords above (custom error pages, mod_rewrite, etc) and google should get you to the resources you need.

posted at 05:20 am on November 14, 2003 by Jason

6 re: seamless redirects

In our case it’s done with ASP, but it can be handled many ways. One reason I like working with Brian is that, although his business card says he’s a developer, he thinks like an interaction designer — that is, he considers how people will use online materials and tries to find ways to make usage easier, more convenient, and more intuitive.

In this article I focused on the thinking behind a particular problem rather than the implementation details. But in answer to your question, I’d use JavaScript redirects only as a last resort (i.e., when you have no access to server-level or database-driven tools).

posted at 05:20 am on November 14, 2003 by apartness

7 re: seamless redirects

Hi,

Thanks for the quick responses and pointers – I’ll have a look at which options are open to me. I was sure that javascript was a clunky solution, but wasn’t aware of some of the other avenues available to me.

I imagine the custom error page approach will prove to be the most feasable approach.

Thanks again!

posted at 05:42 am on November 14, 2003 by K C

8 Thanks, I needed that

We’re going through similar growing pains with my university’s site. There are over a thousand pages of crap HTML with no standard template – all put together by hand over many years – at URLs that sometimes make sense and sometimes don’t. Now we’ve finally got a workable CMS and a small but dedicated staff who care about design and web standards. I feel a little more confident about the journey ahead after reading “Tackling Usability Gotchas.” Thanks, I needed that.

posted at 06:35 am on November 14, 2003 by R. Hambleton

9 Good article

I don’t have much to say about discussing this article, I just wanted to say that it was a good read and I’ll probably be re-reading when/if I ever need to do a redesign like you’ve done.

posted at 09:26 am on November 14, 2003 by Rick

10 Point on redirects

I would use a customised 404 page to inform the search engines that the page presented is not the correct one and to drop any out of date listings from their index.

Thus, the new page will be spidered and indexed while the old one will disappear.

Course I havn’t checked whether this is the case because its Friday and I’m drunk and Jools Holland is on BBC2 :-)

posted at 03:31 pm on November 14, 2003 by someone else

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