: Using 301 redirects when a website is down I have a client who currently has their website hosted with Moonfruit. I've developed a new WordPress site for the client that I'll be launching next

@Nimeshi995

It takes weeks for Google and other search engines to de-index pages and even longer for a website, which would in time would hurt your rankings. The only thing you need to do is return a status 503 rather than a 301 to 404.

This is the definition of the 503 status code from the RFC that defines these status codes:


The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a
temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is
that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some
delay. If known, the length of the delay MAY be indicated in a
Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD
handle the response as it would for a 500 response.


This can be done easily in the .htaccess file or PHP:

HTACCESS ~ Recommended Method

RedirectMatch 503 ^/(?!holding.html)
ErrorDocument 503 /holding.html
Header always set Retry-After "3600"


PHP

$protocol = "HTTP/1.0";
if ( "HTTP/1.1" == $_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"] )
$protocol = "HTTP/1.1";
header( "$protocol 503 Service Unavailable", true, 503 );
header( "Retry-After: 3600" );

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