Adding a redirect

Redirects → Redirects. The form is at the top of the screen.

Old address is the address that no longer works, as people have it. Type /old-page, or paste the whole https://… address out of an email — the rest is ignored. Case, a trailing slash and anything after a ? make no difference: /Old-Page/, /old-page and https://example.com/old-page/?utm_source=mail are one address, and one rule catches all of them.

Send them to is a page on this site, written as /new-page, or a full address somewhere else entirely. A full address on another site needs an account that may redirect there: see Redirecting to another site below.

Kind of redirect is nearly always 301 — Moved for good. See below.

If the form refuses a redirect, it says why above the form and keeps what you typed, so you correct the part that was wrong rather than typing it all again. A refused change to a redirect you are editing leaves that redirect as it was, and the form stays on it. Reload the screen and the form is empty again.

Testing an address#

Redirects → Redirects → Test an address.

Paste an address that is not doing what you expect and this tells you exactly what the site does with it: which redirect catches it, where it sends people, and — when nothing catches it — why. Nothing is changed and nobody is redirected.

It also shows what your address was measured as, which is the answer surprisingly often: capital letters, a trailing slash, a whole pasted URL and a campaign tag all come down to the same address, and seeing that written out settles it.

If the destination is itself redirected, it says so. That works, but it costs the visitor a second round trip and search engines discount the second hop — so point the first redirect at the final address instead.

Moving a whole section#

End the old address with a star and the rule covers everything under it:

A star only ever cuts at a slash, so /blog/ covers /blog and everything under /blog/, and never catches /blogging-tips. Where two section rules could both apply, the more specific one wins: with /blog/ and /blog/2019/*, a 2019 post follows the second.

The four kinds#

301 — Moved for good. The right answer nearly always. It tells search engines the page has moved permanently, and what the old address had counted for moves to the new one. Browsers remember it, which is worth knowing if you are experimenting: a browser that has seen a 301 will keep following it for a while even after you delete the rule.

302 — Moved for now and 307 — Moved for now, keeping the request as it was. For something genuinely temporary — a page away for maintenance, a seasonal landing page. Search engines keep the old address in their index. 307 differs from 302 only in a detail that matters to forms, and 302 is what most people mean.

410 — Gone, and not coming back. Not a redirect: it tells anybody asking that the page has been deliberately removed. Search engines drop it from their results as they would a missing page, and it is honest with visitors in a way that bouncing them to your home page is not. A visitor sees a short page, sized for their screen and in your site's language, saying "This page has been removed." with a link to your home page, so they can carry on from there.