How to set up a 301 re-direct

[Tinkerbell]

I am currently designing a new website in Xara Web Designer Premium for a local community centre. The old website is a Joomla site. This means all the URLs will change. (Joomla uses php whereas Xara uses htm files). The URLs will also, generally speaking become shorter. The new website is at least going on the same main domain. These changes mean that any links currently displaying in a Google search will stop working unless I can add 301 re-directs.
Does anybody know if there is way to do this in a batch method rather than trying to pick up each page individually? Ideally, where there are equivalent pages I would like the re-direct to go to its new equivalent but if this is not possible I'll take the best I can get.

Would a 404 "page not found" work better (Assuming it could be set-up to react to any inputted URL from the old website), provided I included a new nav bar on the 404 page?

Obviously I'm concerned about losing what little google search engine ranking we may already have, but more particularly about potential users clicking on a redundant google link and then being lost.

Thanks for your time.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Tinkerbell, I'd use the following site to write the .htaccess file. Personally I'd have all old links redirect to the new Xara generated index.htm file and add a 'We've moved' type window on my new Xara index and let visitors 're-find' the page they're looking for. However I believe you could do it old page to new page should you have the time. Provided you supply a sitemap re the new site it shouldn't hurt your google ranking to badly.

Example:

//Rewrite to www
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^tinkerbell.com[nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.tinkerbell.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

//301 Redirect Old File
Redirect 301 index.php index.htm

//301 Redirect Entire Directory
RedirectMatch 301 /(.*) //$1

http://www.htaccessredirect.net/

[Tinkerbell]

Hi Egg, thanks for your thoughts. However, I have just learned that the server hosting the website is an IIS server which apparently doesn't use .htaccess
The service provider has volunteered to do the necessary re-directs for me. I can't decide whether this is a good thing or bad thing. I suppose it's easier for me, but it takes awy the control and I do like to have control!

[gwpriester]

You do have the control over whether or not you want this done. If your web host is willing to do it, unless it is non-reversible, I say let them do it. They have the experience and it is one less thing to worry about.

[Egg Bramhill]

Sounds fair enough to me.

[myrlage]

Did your web hosting service take care of this for you? There are other options instead of a 301 redirect as well..