301 or 302 Redirection With PHP

Question

I\'m considering using the following code during a website launch phase to show users a down for maintenance page while showing me the rest of the site.

Is

Answer 1

For a 302 Found, i.e. a temporary redirect do:

header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/home-page.html');
// OR: header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/home-page.html', true, 302);
exit;

If you need a permanent redirect, aka: 301 Moved Permanently, do:

header('Location: http://www.yoursite.com/home-page.html', true, 301);
exit;

For more info check the PHP manual for the header function Doc. Also, don't forget to call exit; when using header('Location: ');

But, considering you are doing a temporary maintenance (you don't want that search engines index your page) it's advised to return a 503 Service Unavailable with a custom message (i.e. you don't need any redirect):

   Your message here.