On an older version of my site I had a directory folder which no longer exists. Ages ago, someone (not me) linked to a page in that directory on a forum and I am now getting some hits from it, which are obviously going to my 404 page. I also get some hits to the ex-pages which I guess are people's saved bookmarks which are now out of date.

The 404 page is customized with a search box to help them get to where they want, but the situation is pants: I want to get them straight to the right page, which still exists but with a different name and in a different directory.

What's the most efficient way to solve this? I have thought about reconstructing the folder and the pages and doing reload to redirect them, but this could potentially amount to quite a lot of pages.

Is there any way to redirect any request of a page from a certain folder, whatever its name? I.e., when someone types
/oldfolder/anyoldname.html
they get redirected to
/newfolder/index.html and can find the page they need

rather than 404? I only have 2 folders that are defunct but lots of files in them, so this would be quicker than resurrecting all the old filenames, but is it possible?

.htaccess and RewriteRule are the answers.
http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mo...nd-tricks.html

.htaccess is not my strong point (Windows IIS is my forte )

But

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.tld$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain.tld$
RewriteRule ^oldfolder/?(.*)$ "http\:\/\/www\.domain\.tld\/newfolder\/" [R=301,L]

should wildcard redirect any page from oldfolder to /newfolder/