Re: [gentoo-user] Major site redesign, SEO, and 301 redirects

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On 01/10/2015 13:35, Tanstaafl wrote:
> Thanks Alan (and everyone else),
> 
> One important follow-up below...
> 
> On 9/29/2015 8:28 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It would be wise to clarify with the devs exactly what it is they are
>> looking for.
> 
> That is the purpose of my upcoming phone call with him.
> 
>> And overall, in your shoes I would be firm, adamant and above all polite
>> and say that infrastructure changes go through you and you alone, and
>> must be vetted by you with full transparency.
> 
> That is what I've been doing so far, but I think the boss is getting
> close to just saying 'give it to them'...

Depending on how senior you are in the place, as technical guy you have
a duty to perform diligence. Persist.

> 
> But - no one has addressed my main question...
> 
> I understand that 301 redirects are performed by web servers only, you
> can't really do these in DNS. However, some Managed DNS providers -
> DNSMadeEasy included - offer this ability as a service. DNSMadeEasy
> calls  them 'http redirects', and the actual redirect is accomplished by
> one of their own web servers they have set up to handle these.

Information is still sparse, so I'm having to fill in the blanks a lot.
Here's what I imagine is probably happening:

The only useful thing you can get out of DNS for an HTTP request is an A
record for an IP address.

Say you are example.com and do your own DNS; www.example.com is 1.2.3.4.
A SaaS provider can control your DNS and they set the TTL on that A
record very low so (like DynDNS does) they can point it at their web
servers.

A request comes in for http://www.example.com/index.html, and your DNS
cache needs to query it. The provider's DNS returns 2.3.4.5 which is the
provider's front end web server. That web server figures out the address
is your's, and issues a 301 to the user, which takes them to the
production web server with the real site on it.

Providers do this a lot so they can load balance web sites, redirect
users to local nearby web servers and other optimizations. The downside
is they need to control your DNS.

Me, personally I would never allow that, not for the entire domain. I
would rather delegate the specific address they want to control
(www.example.com) and let them tweak that all day if they like.

> Is it 'normal' to do these 301 redirects at the DNS level like that? I
> would think they should be using the current web server hosting the
> current site to start doing the redirects as they get the new landing
> pages done?

Depends what their business model is. If they deliver the full service,
they'd have to do something like I described above for it to work.

This is assuming the contractor is a full SaaS provider and not only a
web-site developement company

> Apache does this using a .htaccess file (if I'm interpreting
> my googling responses correctly).

An .htaccess file is nothing special, all it is is a config file that
can contain whatever directives are allowed in httpd.conf but applies
only to the directive .htaccess is in. Everything in .htaccess is a
valid directive that can go in httpd.conf, but not necessarily the other
way round. They are especially useful for shared hosting where you want
your customers to be able to tweak specific directives for their sites
and you can't give them access to httpd.conf and really can't be
bothered doing it for them for every requested change :-)

So when google gives a result saying "do it in .htaccess", that's the
internetz being meaningless. What it really means is "configure apache
to do a redirect for URLs that look like so"


> And now that I worded it that way - how would they do that exactly?
> Would the proper method be to redirect it to a new test domain, ie:
> 
> www.example.com/page1.htm >> www.new-example.com/newpage1.htm ?
> 
> Or save the new page on the old server, then do:
> 
> www.example.com/page1.htm >> www.example.com/newpage1.htm ?
> 
> Now I'm confusing myself...


It can get confusing. Best to ask them directly what they intend to do.
We can presume all day and never figure it out.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com