Best Redirect with PHP

[casbboy]

I am updating my linking system for articles tonight and here is an example of the changes that will occur (only on new articles)

mysite.com/news/4567

to

mysite.com/nw/4567-funny-video

or something like that.

If a new article is acccessed through the old link, I want to do a redirect to the new article. I was going to do this with php with the header function

header("Location:$newpage");

is this the best way to do it or do I have to send something else to avoid duplicates with search engines? Can doing this redirect transfer the PR as well?

What is the best option here?

Thanks
Ryan

[stymiee]

Use a 301 redirect.

[Vick!]

Why don't you use .htaccess redirect? Its better than keep to duplicate pages and redirect one to another.

Here is the code for 301 redirection using .htaccess -- Best method IMO

Redirect 301 /old/old.html http://www.you.com/new.html

If you still want to use PHP redirect, here is the 301 redirect method recommended by stymiee

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?>

[casbboy]

I ended up doing a php, since the new urls are dynamic and based on new variables in our database.

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); 
header("Location: $movlink");
exit(); 

I do the same with 404's right?

header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
header("Location:http://www.mysite.com/noexist.php");
exit(); 

Thanks
Ryan