Redirecting a web page with meta refresh

This help page explains how to redirect a single web page to a new web address, using the meta refresh method.

See Cruzio’s redirect overview to decide which redirect method you should use.

Please proceed with caution. If you make mistakes, your website may become unreachable.

What is a meta refresh redirect, and why should I use it?

With the meta refresh redirect method, you put some specific HTML code in your old web page.

When someone visits the old page, the redirect will automatically take them to the new address.

Benefits and drawbacks of a meta refresh redirect:

  • Does not require access to your website’s root directory
  • Requires that you access and edit each page that you want to redirect
  • Does not preserve search engine rankings or inbound links for the redirected page
  • Because spammers use this technique, search engines may penalize the page’s rank

A meta refresh redirect is not as good as a .htaccess redirect, which is more powerful and preserves search engine page rankings. However, sometimes only a meta refresh redirect is possible. For example, if you are moving from a free GeoCities site to Cruzio hosting, Yahoo! does not allow you to use a .htaccess redirect. A meta refresh redirect, done properly, is the right method in this case.

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Redirecting a page with meta refresh

  1. Log in to your Web space, using either an FTP Program (such as Filezilla or CyberDuck) or your website’s File Manager. (Note: if you have Cruzio Classic hosting, the File Manager is not available, and you must use FTP instead.)

    In your Web space, find the page you want to redirect.

  2. Open the page’s file for editing.

    Remove all existing code from the page. To replace it, paste in the following code:

    <html>
<head>
<title>Moved to new address: http://yourdomain/pathto/newpage.extension</title>
<meta http-equiv=refresh content="0; url=http://yourdomain/pathto/newpage.extension" />
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />
</head>
<body>
<h1>This page has been moved to http://yourdomain/pathto/newpage.extension</h1>
<p>If your browser doesn't redirect you to the new location, please <a href="http://yourdomain/pathto/newpage.extension"><b>click here</b></a>. Sorry for the inconvenience!</p>
</body>
</html>

     

    Note: it’s important that you do not add any keywords or advertising to this page, and that you do not delay the refresh by changing the number 0. If you do these things, you risk having your page be regarded as Web spam, and being penalized by search engines.

  3. In the new code, make these changes:
    For this: Substitute this:
    yourdomain the page’s domain at the new address
    (for example, “joeswebsite.com”)
    pathto the path to the directory containing the page
    (for example, “topics/news”)
    oldpage the filename of the page you are redirecting
    (include only a slash “/” in front of oldpage, creating a “relative address”)
    extension the page’s extension, if it has one
    (for example, “html” or “php”)
    newpage the filename of the new page
    (include the initial “http://” in front of newpage, creating an “absolute address”)

     

    Save the changes to your page.

    Your redirect is active! Test it by opening the old page in your browser, and making sure the browser takes you to the new location.

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