This is a very simple to use utility. It is for those who have just moved all their pages to a new web site, and the new site is an exact copy of the old one. There's also a more advanced feature which can help you redirect a complex site that has had its pages organisation changed.
Intro - muli url - htaccess - next
Intro
Perhaps you have just bought a new domain name, or changed the domain name for your web site. Then what you would like to have for your visitors to your old pages is something like this:
For every one of your old files on the old web site, you want a forwarding mirror to forward visitors to the same file in the identical location on the new web site.
So, if the old location was http://www.oldsite.com/folders/file.htm, then you want to replace that file by a forwarding mirror that forwards your visitors to http://www.newsite.com/folders/file.htm and so on.
It is a lot of work to make all those forwarding mirrors by hand, especially if the old site has hundreds of web pages. But Text Echo can make all the forwarding pages automatically for you.
To use this feature, you need to have a copy of your web site in a local folder. Then you tell TFE where it is on your computer, and tell it the base url to forward the pages to, and it does all the rest for you.
Here it is in action:
To find this feature in Text Echo, go to
You can also find it in the menu for - that's mainly useful if you want to click on the links to show them in the TFE main window to see the HTML source code.
Redirect of a site that has been re-organised
If you want to do a redirect of a complex site that's been re-organised, you can use the multi-urls check box.
I used one of those for robertinventor.com.
Most of the pages were moved to robertinventor.com/software - but some were moved to robertinventor.com/software/main and some to robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy. I also renamed a folder from Text_Field_Echo to Text_Echo and wanted to make redirects for that as well, and I'd moved comportmonitor.htm to a new folder with the url robertinventor.com/software/comportsmonitor/index.htm.
So I did a multi-url redirect like this (except that I've simplified the location for the local web site)
+ c:\new web site\main
= robertinventor.com/software/main
+ c:\new web site\tunesmithy
= robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy
+ c:\new web site\::Text_Field_Echo
= robertinventor.com/software/::Text_Echo
+ C:\new web site\::comportmonitor.htm
= robertinventor.com/software/::comportsmonitor/index.htm
+ c:\new web site\
= robertinventor.com/software
+ CATCH_ALL
= robertinventor.com/software/main/redirect_not_found.htm
So - the page is first redirected to software/main if that's possible - but if not found there then to software/tunesmithy.
The Text_Field_Echo pages are all redirected to robertinventor.com/software/Text_Echo (folder was renamed) (the :: there marks the start of the renamed folder).
The comportmonitor.htm page is redirected to comportsmonitor/index.htm (you can redirect any number of individual pages in the same way).
Any remaining pages (most of them in this case) are redirected to software/ if possible.
If the page isn't found in any of those places it gets redirected to the catch all url.
Exs:
fts_download.htm -> software/tunesmithy/fts_download.htm
acceptable_use.htm -> software/main/acceptable_use.htm
Text_Field_Echo/index .htm -> software/Text_Echo/index .htm
comportmonitor .htm -> software/comportsmonitor/index.htm
Lissajous_3D/help/index .htm -> software/Lissajous_3D/help/index .htm
After making the redirect list, then it was just a case of a click on Make Web page redirects, and all the forwarding pages were made in one go.
.htaccess creation
This option is appropriate if you want the pages to redirect instantly, and if you want to keep the page ranks in search engines of the old pages. If you want the visitor to see the redirect page then this method isn't suitable - or perhaps you could use it for a short while until the search engines update their listings then revert to the visible page redirects after that..
This check box can be used to automatically generate a .htaccess file to do the redirects. This method is search engine friendly as they will recognise it and will move the page ranks of the old pages to the new urls, so it is the way to move a web site without losing your page ranking.
If you have one of these files already, then to add in the new redirects, add a blank line to the end of your existing file, then paste the contents of the new .htaccess gernerated by TE to the end of it.
This method is appropriate if you have your web site hosted on a Linux machine with an Apache Server (prob. the most common web site configuration).
When the visitor types the old url into the address bar, and clicks the button to go to the site, then it will immediately be replaced by the new url.
You can redirect a whole site to a new url this way using e.g.
redirect 301 / http://www.example.com
Or redirect individual folders:
redirect 301 /oldfolder http://www.example.com/newfolder/
Or individual pages:
redirect 301 /oldpage.htm http://www.example.com/newpage.htm
Search engines will recognise these redirects, and will use the page rankings for the old pages for the new redirected pages.
Anyay for a small site or a simple redirect, the .htaccess is easiliy made by hand - but if you want to use .htaccess to redirect a lot of individual files and folders, then you can use Text Echo to speed up the process of making it.
I used this option with the old robertinventor pages - I wanted to add to the .htaccess only the pages that had been moved to the new software site - pages that hadn't been moved should be left where they are. So I got TE to auto-generate the .htaccess for the top level pages individually - using the same rules as for the multi-url detect in the previous section.
It generated a file like this:
redirect 301 /acceptable_use.htm http://robertinventor.com/software/main/acceptable_use.htm
redirect 301 /affiliate_scheme.htm http://robertinventor.com/software/main/affiliate_scheme.htm
redirect 301 /chord_progr_player.htm http://robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy/chord_progr_player.htm
...
redirect 301 /t64/ http://robertinventor.com/software/t64/
redirect 301 /Text_Field_Echo/ http://robertinventor.com/software/Text_Echo/
redirect 301 /virtualflower/ http://robertinventor.com/software/virtualflower/
...
which I just pasted in to the end of the .htaccess file for my site.
Notice that it redirects the files in the top level directory, and the folders below that. That's the effect of switching on the "." check box. With that switched off then it will do individual redirects for every single redirected file on your web site - but that may make a large .htaccess file if your site is very large.
Freeware / Shareware status: This feature is shareware. However, if you just have one big one-off job to do, you will easily manage it within the one month test drive.
It is acceptable to use the test drive in this way - it lets you run the program fully featured, and it isn't required that you just use it for evaluation during the test drive. You can give a donation or buy the program if you found it especially useful and want to show your appreciation.
To read more about Text Echo, go on to:
Editable Clipboard Viewer & Other Features
To get the program, download and install Text Echo
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