had three conversations this week where the word meant something different each time, so here is how i define redirect when i write a handover doc now.
1: a 301 or 308 at the server or in a plugin, the browser gets a new url and search engines move the page
2: a 302 or 307, temporary, and the number of times i have found a temporary one that has been in place for four years is depressing
3: a meta refresh in the html, which works for humans and is a coin flip for anything else
4: a javascript location change, invisible to anything that does not run js, so my crawler says the page is fine and the visitor ends up elsewhere
5: a dns level thing, which is not a redirect at all, it is a different server answering, and this is the one that starts arguments
Number 4 is the one that keeps biting me because monitoring says 200 and everyone is happy. What do you put in a handover so the next person knows which kind they are looking at?
Source: r/WebsiteHealth · by /u/mikkel_karlsson