Question:

Hi
we are undergoing a major site overhaul and intend setting up a permanent re-direct for over 3000 URL’s .   We intend using the .htaccess file for this with the following command:

RedirectMatch permanent ^/old-file-name.html$ http://www.our-website-url.com/newfolder/new-file-name.html

With over 3000 of these re-directs in the .htaccess file does anyone know what will be the reduction in time for loading a re-directed page?

How does the server read the .htaccess file?

Are there any quantifyable values available indicating approximate times for checking a .htaccess file depending on the numbers of re-directs involved?

Thanks

John

Solution:

that’s exactly what I mean
This docs reads very simple, and ends up as configuration in your httpd.conf like:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteMap legacy txt:/path/to/your/map.txt
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ ${legacy: $1 }

# where in your/map.txt you simply define:

old-file-name.html new-file-name.html
# .. and so on ..

To get a better performance you better use a DBM file instead of a plain text file. In that case you just have to replace txt: by dbm: in the above rules and point to you dbm file. This must be a valid dbm formated file, obviously (see you system’s tools for making dbm files).