Question

update

Here is the situation:

I’m working on a website that has no physical folder structure. Nothing had been planned or controlled and there were about 4 consecutive webmasters.

Here is an example of an especially ugly directory

• \new\new\pasite-new.asp

most pages are stored in a folder with the same name as the file, for maximum redundancy.

• \New\10cap\pasite-10cap.asp
• \QL\Address\PAsite-Address.asp

each of these [page directories]? (I don’t know what else to call them) has an include folder, the include folder contains the same *.inc files in every case, just copied about 162 times for each page directory. The include folder was duplicated so that the
<!--#include file="urlstring"--> would work correctly due to lack of understanding of relative paths, and the #inclue virtual directive or using server.execute()

Here is a picture if my explanation was lacking.

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Here are some of my limitations:

• The site is written in ASP classic
• Server is Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 , IIS 6 (According to my resource)
• I have no access to the IIS server
• I would have to go through a process to add any modules or features to iis

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What changes can I make that would allow me to move pages around and rename them while not breaking incoming links from external sites that still use the poorly formed URLs?

To make my question more specific.

How can I move the file 10cap.asp from \new\10cap\ to a better location like \ and rename the file to someting like saveourhomescap.asp and not break any incoming links and finally, not have to leave a dummy 10cap.asp page in the original location with a redirect to the new page.

Answer 1

Well, you have a lot of limitations and especially no access to the IIS server hurts. An ISAPI module for URL rewriting is not an option here (IIS) and equally a custom 404 page where you could read the referer and forward with a HTTP 301 won’t work (IIS).

I would actually recommend you to go through the process and let them install:

• An ISAPI URL rewriting module

or if that doesn’t work (for any reason):

• Let them point the HTTP 404 of your web to a custom 404.asp, read the referer and redirect with a HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) to your new location.

If none of this is an option for you, I can think about another possibility. I haven’t actually tried that so I’m not 100% sure if it will work, but in theory it sounds good 😉

You could make in your global.asa in the Session_OnStart event a Response.Redirect or change the header of your response to a HTTP 301. This will actually only work for new users and not fix real 404 errors. Sorry, for the pseudo code, but it’s a while ago that I had anything to do with classic ASP and I think you’ll get what I mean 😉

sub Session_OnStart

    ' here should be a Select Case switch or something like that 
    Response.Redirect("newlocation.asp")

    ' or if that will work, this would be better (again with switch)
    Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
    Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://company.com/newlocation.asp"

end sub

Hope that helps.