redirects with static sites

[Diana Shannon <te...@mac.com>]

Seems to me redirecting may be an issue for some future Forrest sites as 
they upgrade their documentation organization (and implement clean, but 
*different*, URI spaces). I starting dealing with this issue last 
weekend with Cocoon (the link to faq and XMLForm How-To docs changed), 
and I'd like to come up with a systematic (not ad-hoc) approach for 
future redirect needs.

What approach should be taken for handling redirects on 
statically-deployed sites generated by Forrest doc builds?

- Can we deploy an .htaccess file with such sites? If so, could we add a 
.htaccess file somewhere and simply copy it over to the proper location 
during the docs build? I suppose it could also be generated within the 
docs build (adding a new depends target) by transforming a redirect.xml 
file (with all redirect info) into an .htaccess text file.

- If the above isn't possible, are html files with meta refresh tags and 
accompanying text (with explicit anchor href to same refresh target) 
acceptable? If so, we could generate these during a docs build (again, a 
new target dependency). The target could transform a single redirect.xml 
file, using Xalan extension redirect function, generating all of the 
necessary files in the proper locations within the docs build.

- Something else?

Either way, designating redirects in a single file would be a lot easier 
to manage. IMO, it's important to keep old links alive for users.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

Thanks.

Diana

Re: redirects with static sites

[Steven Noels <st...@outerthought.org>]

Diana Shannon wrote:


> Either way, designating redirects in a single file would be a lot easier 
> to manage. IMO, it's important to keep old links alive for users.
> 
> Any thoughts, suggestions?

+100

We need to reiterate URL namespace architecture for Forrest, and 
supporting legacy links should be part of that. I'm still quite busy 
ATM, but consider it to be on our todo list!

</Steven>

Re: redirects with static sites

[Bert Van Kets <be...@vankets.com>]

>
>Either way, designating redirects in a single file would be a lot easier 
>to manage. IMO, it's important to keep old links alive for users.

+1 for a single file.
I do agree the docs must be available at all time, redirect or not.  I just 
hope that the "temporary" redirect won't be used as a permanent solution.

Bert


>Any thoughts, suggestions?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Diana
>
>