.htaccess redirect question

[drivetowin]

OK

Havent asked a question about this for a while as I've mostly got my head around it but before I spend hours trying to get this to work if its not possible........

I used to have a lot of pages in a subdirectory - they no longer exist - can I put a .htaccess file either in that directory or in the root directory which will point anyone trying to access one of those pages to a particular webpage - essentially I want to tell visitors that that range of products is no longer available but still let them view the rest of the site rather than them just get a 404 error

[Keith]

this thread should sort you out http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/14412.htm

[Elaine]

if you want to redirect individual pages its

permanent redirect /oldpage.htm http://www.newpage.htm



i'm sure there must be variations to redirect file to file as well - but didnt get there far

cheers

[Frostie]

As mentioned, use redirects - similar to when you change from html to php, or move files to a new directory.

As an example, I have in mine;
redirect 301 /about.html http://www.mysite.co.uk/about_us.php

But you could also have for example;
redirect 301 /category.php?cat=1 http://www.mysite.co.uk/no_longer_exists.php
redirect 301 /category.php?cat=5 http://www.mysite.co.uk/no_longer_exists.php
redirect 301 /category.php?cat=7 http://www.mysite.co.uk/no_longer_exists.php

etc.

Oh, and this .htaccess file sites in my root.