how to handle no longer available pages with a 301 redirect

[wyattea]

Hi, I have a gift baskets site, we discontinue certain designs all the time. We try to reuse the same name of a design when a new design replaces it but that hasn't always happened based on the 'look' or theme of the design. Many of the 'discontinued' designs are indexed and have a pagerank (some pr3 and some pr4).

What's the best option for older pages that are no longer valid? (i didn't delete the filenames...i kept them online with a 'no longer available' tag so that they didn't get a 404.

(btw, I have a signature and html set to 'on' but it says HTML is off and my signature html code displays instead of 'renders'...what's up with that? :)

James

[brian.mark]

A 301 would be a good way to handle it. If you have "Categories", redirecting visitors to the category that your discontinued model was in can be very effective. Otherwise, a similar model could work as a target. Just do what makes sense to your visitors.

As for the signature, use bbcode.

Gift Baskets Canada - Grenville Station Gift Baskets and Corporate Gift Solutions

That will display as follows:

Gift Baskets Canada - Grenville Station Gift Baskets and Corporate Gift Solutions

Brian.