in reply to 301 Redirect using Perl

re 2: I suspect the answer is 'yes.'

That's an inference, based on the fact that hosting companies typically provide some sort of management panel that allows you to specify "custom" error pages... However, a search of Apache's config options may give you a direct route. Perhaps one or the other of these approaches will be useful, depending on whose server it is, etc....

... or, I may be all wet, but FWIW.