Redirects and Broken Links

The migration to the new server is going slow. I am rewriting each line of code. Oddly, my programming style is becoming more Spartan. with time.

Here is the code for the primary redirect program. A redirect program simply records a hit and sends the user to destination for a link.

Most users don't like web sites recording their links. So, I only use the redirect program on merchant ads and paid links. I only track usage for about 5% of the links in the site.

My stat counters say that the redirect program has been called 1.7 million times; So, I figure that I have sent well over 20,000,000 hits to sites listed in the directory.

There are several robots, eg Googlebot, that read the site. Many of these robots are created by companies that send traffic to web sites. I believe my local directories have had a positive impact on local commerce.

Anyway, I made two huge improvements with this new version of my redirect program.

The first is that the program now produces full blown pages, instead of a cryptic message, when links aren't found.

The really big improvement is that I decided to start recording information about broken redirects.

I did not do this before because my site verify the existence of a link before generating the code for the link.

While coding this site, I realized that, if I began using redirects for more links, then I would be in a better position to discover broken links as they occur.

So, I will probably come back and visit this redirect page after I finish the migration to my new server.