Meta Refresh

The 'meta refresh' tag allows you to automatically reload the current page after a set time period.

Actually, it's just the <meta> tag. The refresh bit is simply the value you give to the http-equiv attribute. Anyway, here's how you refresh the page using HTML.

Refresh the Current Page

This code refreshes the current page after 5 seconds:

Redirect to Another Page

You can also redirect the user to another page if you wish. This example redirects to another page immediately. By setting a low time interval (i.e. "0"), the page will refresh/redirect almost as soon as the user arrives.

Note that the W3C doesn't recommend using this method for redirections. This is because, behind the scenes, no information is provided to the browser (or search engine) about the original page or destination page. It's better to use a server-side redirection (directly via the web server) or using server-side code. Here's an example of using ColdFusion to do a URL redirection.

JavaScript Refresh

The <meta> tag isn't the only way you can do a client-side refresh. You can also use JavaScript to refresh the page.