Is 61k to big for an .htaccess

Well, you could always put the redirects in a file called .redirects, and use an “Include .redirects” type directive in .htaccess to easily revert it.

I guess I was more concerned with how much strain it would put on my server more than where exactly the redirects were stored. I actually went ahead and did this last night with 1400 lines and 120kb… no signs of crashing yet. Is this a bad idea?

As long as you don’t have a low bandwidth limit…

I’m curious about the “why” of it; how come so many redirects?

If you’re doing lots and lots of very similar redirects, yes, having them as separate RewriteRules in htaccess will impact server performance.

Look into using a RewriteMap instead. It does require a little more thought to make it work, however the map itself is loaded into memory and stays there until it changes, making the lookups happen in a fraction of the time and the rewrite rule itself not use so much server time for processing.

Thanks for your replies:

Handy: My rewrites are an attempted solution to this problem. I am trying to eliminate all the 404’s that google is finding.

Otto: I looked into those but I’m not to proficient at at Rewrites and I had my doubts as to whether a map would work because of the problem I had (referenced in the link above). The problem is that I’m redirecting multiple posts from a single category (as far as google was concerned) to multiple categories.

I’m guess I’m content with this unless: A) My site goes down because of server load or B) Some sort of RewriteMap is possible.

Thanks though!

A RewriteMap is always possible. But definitely read up on the topic as it’s not always straightforward and obvious.