301 or 302 Redirection With PHP
Php.HtaccessRedirectHttp Status-Code-302Php Problem Overview
I'm considering using the following code during a website launch phase to show users a down for maintenance page while showing me the rest of the site.
Is there a way to show the correct 302 re-direction status to search engines or should I look for another .htaccess based approach?
$visitor = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
if (preg_match("/192.168.0.1/",$visitor)) {
header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/thank-you.html');
} else {
header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/home-page.html');
};
Php Solutions
Solution 1 - Php
For a 302 Found, i.e. a temporary redirect do:
header('Location: http://www.example.com/home-page.html');
// OR: header('Location: http://www.example.com/home-page.html', true, 302);
exit;
If you need a permanent redirect, aka: 301 Moved Permanently, do:
header('Location: http://www.example.com/home-page.html', true, 301);
exit;
For more info check the PHP manual for the header function Doc. Also, don't forget to call exit; when using header('Location: ');
But, considering you are doing a temporary maintenance (you don't want that search engines index your page) it's advised to return a 503 Service Unavailable with a custom message (i.e. you don't need any redirect):
<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable");
header("Status: 503 Service Unavailable");
header("Retry-After: 3600");
?><!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Temporarily Unavailable</title>
<meta name="robots" content="none" />
</head>
<body>
Your message here.
</body>
</html>
Solution 2 - Php
The following code will issue a 301 redirect.
header('Location: http://www.example.com/', true, 301);
exit;
Solution 3 - Php
I don't think it really matters how you do it, from PHP or htaccess. Both will accomplish the same thing.
The one thing I want to point out is whether you want the search engines begin to index your site in this "maintenance" phase or not. If not, you could use the status code 503 ("temporarily down"). Here's a htaccess example:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} !=503
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} ^192\.168\.0\.1
ErrorDocument 503 /redirect-folder/index.html
RewriteRule !^s/redirect-folder$ /redirect-folder [L,R=503]
In PHP:
header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/redirect-folder/index.html', true, 503);
exit;
With the current PHP redirect code you're using, the redirect is a 302 (default).
Solution 4 - Php
Did you check what header you're getting? Because you should be getting a 302 with above.
From the manual: http://php.net/manual/en/function.header.php
> The second special case is the "Location:" header. Not only does it send this header back to the browser, but it also returns a REDIRECT (302) status code to the browser unless the 201 or a 3xx status code has already been set.
<?php
header("Location: http://www.example.com/"); /* Redirect browser */
/* Make sure that code below does not get executed when we redirect. */
exit;
?>
Solution 5 - Php
From the PHP documentation:
> The second special case is the "Location:" header. Not only does it send this header back to the browser, but it also returns a REDIRECT (302) status code to the browser unless the 201 or a 3xx status code has already been set.
so you are already doing the right thing.
Solution 6 - Php
save this file in the same directory as .htaccess
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
# To show 404 page
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
# Permanent redirect
Redirect 301 /util/old.html /util/new.php
# Temporary redirect
Redirect 302 /util/old.html /util/new.php