HTTP Status Codes: 302 Moved Temporarily -When is this used?

prad · Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 3

I have an ecommerce site that is a subdomain of another site. I have been receiving a large number of 302 Moved temporarily (redirect)status codes and have become quite concerned that my customers are being rerouted to the main domain. For example, my site is www.mysite.mainsite.com and I'm concerned the customers are being rerouted to www.mainsite.com.

When I ask the main site administrator about the large number of 302 codes, I'm told different things, the latest of which is that the 302 codes appear whenever a customer views their shopping cart. This makes no sense because the shopping cart URL starts with www.mysite.mainsite.com so I don't see the need for a redirect. I was previously told that my site stats will show a 302 code for each page of the checkout process (which have secure pages and a URL that begins with https.). Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated because I am becoming quite upset about this and feel that my sales are being skimmed.

PayneLess Designs · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 4289 Location: MS

302 Redirect

prad · Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 3

PayneLess Designs - Thanks for your response. What I'm looking for is if a 302 HTTP code makes sense to use in the way that I mentioned above. I'm trying to find out if it's reasonable to use such a code when one goes from a page in an ecommerce site to the view cart page.

PayneLess Designs · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 4289 Location: MS

Guess you didn't read the info as to what you use a 302 for. It's stated as to WHY you would use it.

prad · Joined: 10 Jul 2009 Posts: 3

I'm still confused. I'm not a web developer and the use of HTTP codes is not something that I'm really familiar with. I still can't figure out if it's appropriate to use a 302 redirect in the instance mentioned above. I need to figure out if that's an appropriate use of the 302 redirect. Is it common to use a redirect when going from a page in an ecommerce site to a page where you view the cart contents? Especially if both pages start with the same domain name.

PayneLess Designs · Joined: 28 Feb 2007 Posts: 4289 Location: MS

If you do not have an old domain name where you need to maintain page rank with the search engines temporarilym then any redirect is not needed.

The eCommerce app should be sending user to Cart direct if user clicks the "View Cart" button. It's like using PayPal. When you click the "Buy Now" button, the code sends you to their site to complete the transaction according to the code you have set up on your page for that product.

Since you said your code is correct and it is using the sub-domain name, but only the pages affected are the checkout pages, the .htaccess file for the secure "https://" may be incorrect. The owner of main domain should be able to check that and do the necessary rewrites to make sure all referrers for your sub-domain name go where they should.

I suspect the problem is happening because you are having to use the secure Cart of the main domain name and the https://sub-domain_name.com/ may be reverting to original URL. Just a guess.