301 redirects

[jwdl]

Hello,

I want to ditch about 1000 pages of a 2000+ page site. I believe the 301 redirect thing is the way to go but my expertise is limited. Is there a way to do a blanket redirect ie if a user or search engine looks for a page thats not there it all gets redirected to the index page or do I have to do each one manually?

Thanks

Ian

[jwdl]

ok thanks

[SEOAndy]

you can point example.com to any directory you wish...

and they should be on seperate lines, not sure why moz changes that

RewriteEngine on RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^gallery/(.*) http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]

[jwdl]

Hello Andy,

Thanks for that.

I have most of it in a directory so just so I know I've got it right... in the htaccess file I put a line:

RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^gallery/(.*) http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]

Where /gallery is the directory to be moved, will send everything from the directory (including stuff in subdirectories) to the index page? I do have a corresponding new gallery but the file names are different.

Cheers

[SEOAndy]

this depends how your site is set up ... for example if you are redirecting a directory (eg .com/blog/) to your root thats easy enough to do - but if they are specific files that don't have within say the root or a folder you are not redirecting in it's entirety it would be manual work I am afraid. - see below

The other option is to drop to 404 page if you are just removing the content and not redirecting to relevant content ... admitting a page is missing and hasn't been replaced is sometimes the best way to show you are working on your site and consolidating info to be valuable to users. Also you can use your 404 page to have a big of fun and explain to users why something has gone missing or changed - or even just have a search box there.

_RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^old_dir/(.*) http://www.example.com/new_dir/ [R=301,L]_