More Than One Way to Redirect

After my article describing what a .htaccess file is and how it can be used to help your own Web development, I received dozens of E-mails on the subject. It has been one of the most popular topics I have covered for 2005 so far. Of all of them I have plowed through so far, my exchange with Randy (a loyal Lockergnome fan) has been most enlightening.

I enjoyed reading your article on htaccess files. (FWIW, I obtained the article link through one of Lockergnome’s daily newsletters.) Learning more about this file’s functionality actually can address a temporary need of mine. I have several domains parked under my active domain’s ip address. At some point, one or more of these domains will have a unique ip address assigned. Until the site(s) go live, parking the domains saves some cash; I would like to use the htaccess file to redirect visitors to a custom page which describes the project’s scope and provides a tentative “go live date.”

(Essentially, a customized under construction page.) Can you point me to an article or resource which will provide me some specifics as to what changes need to be made in the primary domain’s htaccess file to accomplish this redirection (the file already exists in the domain’s root directory)? Also, I have perfectly legitimate business reasons for wanting to make these changes but don’t want to be penalized by search engine spiders for making these changes. Are there any issues along these lines which I should be aware of before proceeding?

First off, I thanked him for the kind words, and then I suggested two options that I knew of right off the top of my head. The first was creating the redirects for the domain names through the .htaccess file itself. The Javascript Kit Web site has a good article on how to do this and how to make it as painless as possible.

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