DNS vs IIS redirection

[Marketing_Today]

I'm working on a project where a site has gone through a rebrand and is therefore also moving to a new domain name. Some pages have been merged on the new site so it's not a lift and shift job and so I'm writing up a redirect plan.

Their IT dept have asked if we want redirects done by DNS redirect or IIS redirect. Which one will allow us to have redirects on a page level and not a domain level?

I think IIS may be the right route but would love your thoughts on this please.

[max.favilli]

If you are not changing the IP address you don't need to change the DNS, if you change the IP address, in addition to updating the DNS records you also need to properly redirect traffic from old urls to new urls.

With IIS the best option is using url rewrite, which is very flexible but a little tricky to set up if it's the first time you do so: http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/creating-rewrite-rules-for-the-url-rewrite-module

Url rewrite does operate at web server level, its powerful and does the job, but you may consider doing redirects at application level, depending on the technology you use, php/dotnet/aspx/mvc you have different tools. The advantage of doing it at application level is you can redirect dynamically, in other words use an algo to translate the old urls to the new ones using whatever information is stored in the application cache, database, and so on. While using IIS url rewrite you either statically redirect each old url to a the new url or you use regular expressions or wildcards to dynamically do so. In other words using url rewrite you have a little less flexibility.

[RyanPurkey]

Within IIS you use the IIS Manager. Here's a blog on page-by-page: http://www.proworks.com/blog/2010/02/11/adding-a-301-redirect-in-iis-for-individual-pages-with-non-aspx-extensions/  It's older but still applicable.

There's also software available like ISAPI_rewrite that can help with the process if you're migrating between Apache and Windows servers: http://www.helicontech.com/isapi_rewrite

The Windows doc on this: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/6b855a7a-0884-4508-ba95-079f38c77017.mspx?mfr=true

[Marketing_Today]

Thank you very much. What file would manage page by page or directory by directory redirects on an IIS server?

[Highland]

It sounds like you're talking about CNAME vs a 301 redirect.

DNS can't really "redirect", at least in the SEO sense. A CNAME DNS entry acts as a pointer to another site. Sooner or later you have to have an A record to act as the "glue" between yourdomain.com and an IP where it can be accessed. The problem is that yourdomain.com is the end result. So even if it is just a CNAME for loadbalancer.abc.some.cloud.com, it will be seen as yourdomain.com by both the browser and any robots that visit.

A 301 redirect is an actual instruction (HTTP response code) from the web server (IIS in your case) to the end browser, saying that yourdomain.com really belongs over at anotherdomain.com. At that point your browser (or crawling robot) goes to the new domain. This is considered the proper SEO way to redirect anything, as it is known that robots respect the 301 response and most SEO benefits that the previous link had will flow through the 301 to your new page.

[donford]

Hi

If I understand them correctly....

DNS change would be the location for site x is now at this IP. (IP Location Change)

IIS change would be server y is now server x. (Hardware Location Change)

In which case an IIS change would likely be preferred as you don't have to wait for the new DNS update to propagate.

Hope that helps,

Don