PHP header [removed] - what are the implications?

Question

I have domain.com. If the user is logged in, it should load automatically domain.com/option-X where X is a predefined choice of the user.

Answer 1

The effect of the 301 would be that the search engines will index /option-a instead of /option-x. Which is probably a good thing since /option-x is not reachable for the search index and thus could have a positive effect on the index. Only if you use this wisely ;-)

After the redirect put exit(); to stop the rest of the script to execute

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); 
header("Location: /option-a"); 
exit();

Answer 2

Just a tip: using http_response_code is much easier to remember than writing the full header:

http_response_code(301);
header('Location: /option-a'); 
exit;

Answer 3

Make sure you die() after your redirection, and make sure you do your redirect AS SOON AS POSSIBLE while your script executes. It makes sure that no more database queries (if some) are not wasted for nothing. That's the one tip I can give you

For search engines, 301 is the best response code

Answer 4

This is better:

<?php
//* Permanently redirect page
header("Location: new_page.php",TRUE,301);
?>

Just one call including code 301. Also notice the relative path to the file in the same directory (not "/dir/dir/new_page.php", etc.), which all modern browsers seem to support.

I think this is valid since PHP 5.1.2, possibly earlier.

Answer 5

Search engines like 301 redirects better than a 404 or some other type of client side redirect, no worries there.

CPU usage will be minimal, if you want to save even more cycles you could try and handle the redirect in apache using htaccess, then php won't even have to get involved. If you want to load test a server, you can use ab which comes with apache, or httperf if you are looking for a more robust testing tool.