Htaccess redirects how many can i have and does it slow site down

[ClaireH-184886]

I have had to redesign my site this year www.in2town.co.uk because my hosting company made a huge mistake while trying to update the joomla on my site which resulted in me losing thousands of pages and links.

What i would like to know is, i have put some of the old urls in my htaccess file but i would like to know how many old urls i can have in my htaccess file as i am unsure how to use it properly.

my idea was, to have some of the lost url links to my site and put them in my htaccess file and have them pointing to similar pages. not sure if this is a good idea or not.

i think i have lost a few hundred good links but i would like to know if these urls in the htaccess file would slow down my joomla site

any advice would be great.

[AlanMosley]

You mean do a 301 redirect.

i would only bother to redirect the pages that had incomming links. What i do is keep a watch in GWMT and BWMT for 404's that had links, and redirect them as they appear.

does it slow things down, technicaly yes, but such a small amount It really does not matter.

[ClaireH-184886]

i have about 1000 pages that had goog quality links with them and i was thinking of doing a 301 direct in the htaccess file but was worried that this amount would really slow my site down