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 as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
W501 - Introduction to Web Site Structure [332] Looking up IP addresses - (2005-06-01)
[528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
[1024] Web site - a refresh to improve navigation - (2007-01-07)
[1031] robots.txt - a clue to hidden pages? - (2007-01-13)
[1168] Moving out some of the web site bloat - (2007-04-29)
[1176] A pu that got me into trouble - (2007-05-04)
[1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
[1431] Getting the community on line - some basics - (2007-11-13)
[1636] What to do if the Home Page is missing - (2008-05-08)
[1686] FTP - how not to corrupt data (binary v ascii) - (2008-06-24)
[1969] Search Engines. Getting the right pages seen. - (2009-01-01)
[2214] Global Index to help you find resources - (2009-06-01)
[2282] Checking robots.txt from Python - (2009-07-12)
[2552] Web site traffic - real users, or just noise? - (2009-12-26)
A607 - Web Application Deployment - Apache httpd mod_rewrite [631] Apache httpd to Tomcat - jk v proxy - (2006-03-03)
[755] Using different URLs to navigate around a single script - (2006-06-11)
[934] Clustering, load balancing, mod_rewrite and mod_proxy - (2006-11-21)
[1006] Apache httpd and Apache Tomcat together tips - (2006-12-24)
[1009] Passing GET parameters through Apache mod_rewrite - (2006-12-27)
[1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
[1376] Choosing between mod_proxy and mod_rewrite - (2007-10-02)
[1381] Using a MySQL database to control mod_rewrite via PHP - (2007-10-06)
[1731] Apache httpd, MySQL, PHP - installation procedure - (2008-08-01)
[1771] More HowTo diagrams - MySQL, Tomcat and Java - (2008-08-24)
[1778] Pointing all the web pages in a directory at a database - (2008-08-30)
[1954] mod_rewrite for newcomers - (2008-12-20)
[2555] Bookkeeping - (2009-12-29)
[2728] Redirecting a home page using mod_rewrite - (2010-04-17)
[2768] Carrying a long URL around - looking for memorable shorts - (2010-05-17)
[2773] Dynamically watching your web site via a PHP wrapper - (2010-05-21)
[2900] Redirecting a page - silent, temporary or permanent? - (2010-08-03)
[2981] How to set up short and meaningfull alternative URLs - (2010-10-02)
[3197] Finding and diverting image requests from rogue domains - (2011-03-08)
[3339] Simplest ever proxy configuration? - (2011-06-28)
[3568] Telling which ServerAlias your visitor used - useful during merging domains - (2012-01-04)
[3753] Adding a passcode to a directory - (2012-06-05)
[3862] Forwarding a whole domain, except for a few directories - Apache http server - (2012-09-17)
Some other Articles
A room without a viewPHP Course - for hobby / club / charity users.Where is my new Apache httpd installedBlue Ridge and Melksham Chambers of CommerceIf you have a spelling mistake in your URL / page nameLeading LinesTracking difficult bugs, the programmer / customer relationshipC, C++ and C# ... Java and JavaScriptMelksham to GeorgiaThe Longest Day - Wednesday, 28th September