What is the proper way to re-direct?
Question
If I have two domain names:
altcognito.com
and say I've got the other following domain:
alt-cognito.com
What's the "best" redirect (do I use permanent etc...?) I want to suggest that altcognito.com is the "correct" website.
(naturally, these are just examples)
Solution
If you want to say that "you should always go to foo instead of bar," you want a 301 redirect (which you do with your front-end server). See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633
A 302 (temporary) redirect should be used in cases where you can't serve a page, but expect it to come back later. Unfortunately, it's the redirect that you get from JSP forward.
A client-side (meta refresh or javascript) redirect should be avoided whenever possible.
Edit per comment: here's a link to the Apache docs for configuring a permanent (or temporary) redirect: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_alias.html#redirect
OTHER TIPS
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAlias altcognito.com
ServerAlias alt-cognito.com
ServerAlias www.alt-cognito.com
RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://www.altcognito.com/$1
</VirtualHost>
The 3 domains (www and non-www) will 301 redirect to your main domain www.altcognito.com