Best way to implement three hundred 301 redirects on windows server / .NET

Question

I'm going live with a rebuilt website (on a new, Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard server). I have a spreadsheet containing 300 URLs from the old site which are mapped to the new site URLs. The URLs for each are 'clean' in that they don't have file extensions (no .php, .aspx, .htm etc).

I've read about the URL Rewrite extension for IIS here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/04/20/tip-trick-fix-common-seo-problems-using-the-url-rewrite-extension.aspx but it seems to me this is just a GUI tool for writing rules to the web.config file.

If I have 300 rules in web.config won't this hamper performance?

It could be tackled with ISAPI_Rewrite too, but I'm not sure what the optimum way to handle this is.

Can anyone give any advice on the best way to implement my 301 redirects in this situation?

Thanks

Answer 1

If you have a large number of exact URL's that you want to redirect to other exact URL's, have a look at the Rewrite Map feature of the URL Rewrite module. It's specifically designed for that purpose and the performance should be OK.

Answer 2

ISAPI_Rewrite 3 or Helicon Ape can help you handle your situation with ease. They both support plain text map files and Apache-like configuration. See the example of using mapfiles here.