Joshua Street wrote:
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the URI structure either. It's running on
a Zeus web server, which has some weird-ass mod_rewrite equivalent,
but I'm not comfortable enough with it to use it. As for why 301
redirects, I explicitly asked for that after carefully explaining that
it couldn't EVER be moved from where the 301 pointed. Prior to launch
we were using 302 redirects, which (mainly for search engine
reasons... though I'll admit I only ever think about Google, not Yahoo
;-)) I wasn't happy with.
Hence, 301 redirects are the lesser of two evils, and I'm assured it's
not going to move!
I wouldn't believe that. In fact, here's a perfect example of why 301
shouldn't have been used. On Today Tonight (another 7 network program,
for those of you not in Australia), the host made a point of it to
emphasise that the address had changed to:
http://yahoo7.com.au/todaytonight
The old site address has been this for a long time:
http://seven.com.au/todaytonight
I expected to get a redirect from the old site to the new site, but I
didn't. So, I went to the new site address and guess what! I got a
redirect from the *new* Yahoo7 address to the *old* (well, still
current) address.
Plus, it's a 301 Moved Permanently, so once they realise their mistake
(assuming this is one, and not just some bogus advertising attempt) and
they attempt to rectify it by redirecting in the other direction using a
301, I wonder what will happen with caches that still believe
yahoo7.com.au is a permanent redirect to seven.com.au. I've never tried
setting up a loop like that, but I'd imagine the results won't be too
effective.
Another thing, if they do decide to switch to redirection to work the
other way, and when the deal between Yahoo and 7 expires, and they go
back to the current address, it'll screw everything up. Trust me,
they've gone through so many URIs in the last 6 years, it's not funny.
There's i7.com.au, aol7.com.au (no longer belongs to 7 network),
seven.com.au, sevennetwork.com.au, yahoo7.com.au and probably many more
I'm unaware of.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
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