I am building an archive of news articles. The articles are cached in a directory with many others. When that directory becomes too full, I would like to relocate some of the older articles to another location. However, I need users and spiders to be taken to the new location when the files are moved.

I know I can do this with .htaccess, but here is my dilema. The directory that holds the cached files, also holds the news script, and the cacheing script. I am using mod_rewrite in the .htaccess file. I don't really want to alter that .htaccess file, for fear of causing problems with the mod_rewrite.

I am also concerned that the .htaccess option would slow down the site if it became too large.

So, here is my question.

Is there a way to do a 301 redirect without using the .htaccess file?

.htaccess files have to get pretty big before they start making an noticeable impact on the site, so don't rule that method out too early.

However, it is easy to redirect without using .htaccess. You just need to send the right information through the header. Here is an example using PHP:


Just put the following code in the old page

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.whereverthenew/fileis.php");

Hope that's helpful