Interviews are sometimes very interesting as they can point out where you are missing some key information in what you know. In an interview last week I was asked how I would redirect a browser to a new URL.

I immediately suggested using a page with a redirect imbedded using JavaScript – I’ve done this a few times :). The interviewer then gave a hint of status codes…..

I know all about HTTP status codes (2?? = success, 3?? = redirect, 4?? client error, 5?? server side error). And I have used a number of the 200, 400 and 500 errors. So I knew that code 300s was for redirect but I had never actually used them to do so.

I spent some time over the weekend just working out how to do a redirect using 301 – Permanently moved – just because I had never done it before….

So here is how to do it in PHP

http_response_code(301);
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: “.$newurl);