HTTP Status Codes: Checking the Server Headers

Webmasters and Web developers know the HTML, CSS and the necessary code to make Web pages display properly, but some, and perhaps many, do not know the Web server software that delivers Web pages to the Web user's browser and the messages sent from a Web page to other computers and robots accessing the Web pages.

Few years back there was a lot of talk among webmasters regarding HTTP status code Web servers sent to other computers trying to connect to a Web page. At that time, the new Web programming languages like PHP made it possible for webmasters to publish large databases with little effort and they started to use URL rewrite to display nice looking URLs that search engines might like better.

The downside of the URL rewrite was that older URLs, already indexed with the major search engines, needed forwarding to the new type of URLs correctly. This often resulted in wrong server header messages such as status code 302 (found) instead of 301 (moved permanently). Therefore, it is very important for webmasters and Web site owners to make sure their server is sending the correct status codes.

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By: Webmaster on : September 2008