Since changing my site from a wordpress blog to a static site I need to block all old urls from the search indexes.

What I am unsure of is, if I disallow a folder (eg /category/ ), will all subfolders and files be removed form the indexes in time, or will I need to add the individual url's to the robots.txt??

This might seem a bit blonde to people but I just want to be sure.

Thanks in advance...

Yes that will block everything in the folder. You can get most of the information you'll need from the robotstxt.org site. Click the top link on the left for examples of blocking different things.

However why block everything. Why not use 301 redirects to transfer any search value the pages have to an existing page on the site?

I agree with Steve, redirect NOT block.

I thought of leaving the pages in index. But to be honest, the site has been a project for learning more then anything. And I have been concentrating on web design lately. I haven't really spent much time marketing it or generating traffic til now. Search engine traffic for the pages which I have blocked is minimal at present. So I am not too worried about blocking them from search engnes. But I will bear what you 2 have said in mind for future reference so thanks.

I have however set up a .htaccess to redirect 301 all the old pages already. So I will still get traffic from any links I have dropped in the past.

But I now know that I can block whole directories rather then individual url's, which will save time in future. Cheers