Have you ever typed in a URL, such as: http://www.whatever.com, and instead of going directly there, you go somewhere else? You see your browser screen flicker once or twice, and maybe you even hear a clicking sound or two during the process.
If so, you have probably been redirected. It's not a bad thing! This is a very handy tool for anyone who creates web pages. For instance, if I have a page at http://www.toads.com, but change my company name from Toads to Frogs, I'd want people trying to access http://www.toads.com to automatically end up at http://www.frogs.com instead. Redirection makes it possible.
See below for an explanation of how to make your own links open a new browser window.
Here is how redirection works:
You add a special line of HTML code into the header of your html file, so that it looks like this (longer lines may wrap in your browser window, though they are actually on a single line):
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0; URL=http://www.myotherpage.com">
</head>
</html>
In the above code, you'd change 0 to some other number to delay the redirect. If you changed it to 5, the redirect would be delayed for 5 seconds. The URL is up to you, of course. The above example redirects to another site entirely, while it could just redirect to ANY other URL, such as another page on the same site, or a different webserver/port on the same server, as the examples below show:
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="5; URL=mynewhomepage.html">
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="1; URL=https://webmail.mysite.com:8080/cgi-bin/webmail.cgi">
It is also a good idea to add some text to your redirecting page, such as "You will automatically be redirected to the new site in xx seconds," so the user knows what is happening. Also, you should add a link to the new site in the text, in case the user has some antiquated browser that doesn't support redirection. You have probably seen this on other sites.
