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Why do some web applications use an intermediate page before redirecting?

After editing an article or entering some forums or CMS, you get an intermediate page that says something like "Thank you for X, if you did not redirect in a few seconds, click here."

Why do they do this and not go directly to the page?

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There are many reasons for this; and most of them are stupid:

  • The developer might just not know how to set up server-side redirects. (Stupid)
  • The web application can be configured in such a way that certain actions requiring redirection do not allow the redir = parameter to be accepted (something much the same as 1, and still stupid)
  • A developer may try to squeeze more ad impressions from visitors on an intermediate page. (Extremely stupid)
  • The web application can work in extreme "safe mode", which does not allow you to redirect the server side (for example, you guessed it, stupid).
  • The developer could be very frank about what the user did to ensure that the user knows what just happened. (At face value, this seems reasonable. But while users literally couldn't read the status message if their life depended on it, it's silly.)
  • Edit: Use instead of 303 found to implement PRG . (Stupid, see all of the above.)

Edit: When I say that most of them are stupid, I do not want to say that some of them are stupid and some are not. I want to say that some of them are stupid, some of them are extremely stupid.

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I did this to hide the referent from the target site. So, if you are on:

http://host/this/that?some=private;cgi=parameters;that=you+don't+want+exposed

Then sending some through a simple redirector will hide this URL and the final target will see only something in common, for example

 http://host/redir?u=http://example.com/the-target-url

as a referent. Redirect pages can also be used to track clicks.

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You usually get this when you do an HTML redirect (using the meta tag in the HTML header). If you perform an HTTP redirect using the Location: index.php header, you will not get this.

I found that HTML redirecting works a little better with older mobile browsers, so I had to use this instead of HTTP redirecting in some projects. Other than that, there is no particular reason to use one of the others. It is just a matter of taste. Perhaps the forums you link to want you to notice that you will be redirected ...

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