[Gllug] Alias cf Redirect (after Problems with mod_alias and Apache)

[Peter Corlett]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 01:12:11PM +0100, David L Neil Mailing list a/c wrote:
[...]
> However I seem to have fallen into the habit of using:
> Redirect /example http://example.foo.com
> This likely because the sub-domains were often on another physical
> Apache server (and I have the habit of copying working/existing code...).
> Is there an efficiency or other issue associated with this choice?

Alias grafts a different part of your filesystem onto the URL space, whereas
Redirect does an actual HTTP redirect. In your case, you're just redirecting
to somewhere that happens to be serving up the content anyway, so the result
is broadly similar.

I'm a fan of having content at one URL only, and use HTTP redirects to send
visitors to alternative URLs to the canonical version. OTOH aliasing into
another document tree can cause content to appear at multiple URLs.

Reducing duplication of content makes the site more cache- and search engine
friendly. Reducing the hosting bills and/or increasing visitor numbers is a
good thing, surely?

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug