If you have a spelling mistake in your URL / page name

What do I do if someone reports a spelling mistake on one of our pages? I check that they're right (OK - I usually know straight away that they ARE as I'm one of the world's worst spellers and often distort one word into another valid word), and fix the page. And drop them a brief "thank you" of course. It's actually a help to us to correct even quite small goofs - helps our huge web site look more professional, and the changes indicate to search engines that they're not just indexing a decaying archive.

But what if a spelling mistake extends to the URL? To correct or not to correct?

If there are links to the page, especially external ones (Q - how can you tell ... - you can't be sure, but your combined web log gives you a clue), or if it's been indexed by the search engines and is popular (Q - how can you tell ... A - same as previous answer), you don't want to loose the URL, nor do you want it to survive unmodified as the current / used link. So along comes - once again - our "superhero" - mod_rewrite.

Mod_rewrite can be used to rewrite the faulty location to the correct one, and you can place the page at the correct location. Or you could leave the page where it is, and use mod_rewrite to create a new URL for it. Perhaps better would be to relocate the page, and send out a "moved permanently" message to the browser - that's a return status 301.

The particular example that I had this a.m. related to my corruption of the name Pennines into Penines, in our "share" directory. The directory already has a .htaccess file, already has mod_rewrite enabled, so the extra line I added to do the "301" divert was:

RewriteRule ^penines\.(.*)$ /share/pennines.$1 [R=301,L]

Oh - and I moved the page ;-)

Try it out: penines.html (wrong) link and pennines.html (right) link
(written 2009-03-21)

Associated topics are indexed under

W501 - Introduction to Web Site Structure
  [2552] Web site traffic - real users, or just noise? - (2009-12-26)
  [2282] Checking robots.txt from Python - (2009-07-12)
  [2214] Global Index to help you find resources - (2009-06-01)
  [1969] Search Engines. Getting the right pages seen. - (2009-01-01)
  [1686] FTP - how not to corrupt data (binary v ascii) - (2008-06-24)
  [1636] What to do if the Home Page is missing - (2008-05-08)
  [1431] Getting the community on line - some basics - (2007-11-13)
  [1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
  [1176] A pu that got me into trouble - (2007-05-04)
  [1168] Moving out some of the web site bloat - (2007-04-29)
  [1031] robots.txt - a clue to hidden pages? - (2007-01-13)
  [1024] Web site - a refresh to improve navigation - (2007-01-07)
  [528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
  [332] Looking up IP addresses - (2005-06-01)

A607 - Web Application Deployment - Apache httpd mod_rewrite
  [3568] Telling which ServerAlias your visitor used - useful during merging domains - (2012-01-04)
  [3339] Simplest ever proxy configuration? - (2011-06-28)
  [3197] Finding and diverting image requests from rogue domains - (2011-03-08)
  [2981] How to set up short and meaningfull alternative URLs - (2010-10-02)
  [2900] Redirecting a page - silent, temporary or permanent? - (2010-08-03)
  [2773] Dynamically watching your web site via a PHP wrapper - (2010-05-21)
  [2768] Carrying a long URL around - looking for memorable shorts - (2010-05-17)
  [2728] Redirecting a home page using mod_rewrite - (2010-04-17)
  [2555] Bookkeeping - (2009-12-29)
  [1954] mod_rewrite for newcomers - (2008-12-20)
  [1778] Pointing all the web pages in a directory at a database - (2008-08-30)
  [1771] More HowTo diagrams - MySQL, Tomcat and Java - (2008-08-24)
  [1731] Apache httpd, MySQL, PHP - installation procedure - (2008-08-01)
  [1381] Using a MySQL database to control mod_rewrite via PHP - (2007-10-06)
  [1376] Choosing between mod_proxy and mod_rewrite - (2007-10-02)
  [1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
  [1009] Passing GET parameters through Apache mod_rewrite - (2006-12-27)
  [1006] Apache httpd and Apache Tomcat together tips - (2006-12-24)
  [934] Clustering, load balancing, mod_rewrite and mod_proxy - (2006-11-21)
  [755] Using different URLs to navigate around a single script - (2006-06-11)
  [631] Apache httpd to Tomcat - jk v proxy - (2006-03-03)

Back to
Leading Lines

Previous and next
or
Horse's mouth home

Forward to
Blue Ridge and Melksham Chambers of Commerce

Some other Articles

A room without a view
PHP Course - for hobby / club / charity users.
Where is my new Apache httpd installed
Blue Ridge and Melksham Chambers of Commerce
If you have a spelling mistake in your URL / page name
Leading Lines
Tracking difficult bugs, the programmer / customer relationship
C, C++ and C# ... Java and JavaScript
Melksham to Georgia
The Longest Day - Wednesday, 28th September

3597 posts, page by page

Link to page ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72 at 50 posts per page

This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

Link to Ezine home page (for reading).
Link to Blogging home page (to add comments).

You can Add a comment or ranking to this page

Public Training Courses

Running regularly at our UK training Centre.
[Schedule] - [About] - [Book]

Like this? ??