Yesterday, I decided to tackle a project I’d been putting off – setting up a temporary redirect for a bunch of old URLs on my website. Sounds simple, right? Famous last words.
The Setup
I had a list of about 50 URLs that needed to be redirected. These were old blog posts, outdated landing pages, the usual digital debris that accumulates over time. I figured, “Hey, I’ll just knock this out in an hour or so.” Oh, how wrong I was.
The First Attempt (and Fail)
I started with what I thought was the easy route – using a plugin. I use WordPress, so I figured there’d be a million plugins for this. I grabbed one that looked popular, installed it, and started plugging in the URLs. About 10 URLs in, I noticed something weird. The redirects weren’t working consistently. Some worked, some didn’t, some… well, I don’t even know what they were doing.
So, I ditched the plugin. Time for Plan B.
.htaccess Hell
Plan B was the good ol’ .htaccess file. I’ve messed with this file before, so I wasn’t totally terrified. I opened it up, added a few lines of redirect code, saved it, and… nothing. My site was down. Completely. White screen of death.
Panic mode engaged. I frantically undid my changes, uploaded the backup .htaccess file, and… still nothing. I was starting to sweat. I cleared my browser cache, restarted my computer, even sacrificed a small rubber duck to the coding gods (don’t judge). Still down.
After what felt like an eternity (but was probably about 15 minutes of Googling), I realized I’d made a tiny, stupid mistake. A single misplaced character in the .htaccess file had brought my entire site crashing down. I fixed the typo, uploaded the file, and… phew. Site was back.
The Long Slog
Now that I’d (mostly) recovered from my near-death experience, I decided to do the redirects one by one, testing each one meticulously. It was tedious. It was boring. My eyes started to glaze over. I started questioning my life choices.
This took way longer than I expected. That “hour or so” turned into a good chunk of my afternoon. I was starting to feel it.
Victory (Finally!)
But, eventually, I finished. I tested every single redirect. They all worked! I felt a surge of pride (and relief). I’d conquered the temporary redirect beast… or at least, I’d survived it.
Lessons Learned (The Hard Way)
- Always back up your .htaccess file. Seriously. Before you even think about touching it.
- Test, test, test. Don’t assume anything is working until you’ve checked it yourself.
- Plugins aren’t always the answer. Sometimes the “easy” way is actually the hardest.
- Tiny mistakes can have huge consequences. One wrong character can break everything.
- Be prepared for things to take longer than you think. Especially when it comes to anything related to web development.
So, that’s the story of my “temporary hell.” It wasn’t pretty, but I got through it. And hey, at least I have a good story to tell, right? And a newfound respect for the power of a single period in a line of code.
