Redirects

Send one address on your site to another. You need this when an address that used to work stops working, which is nearly always because you changed or removed a page.

The short version

• Redirects are under Redirects in a website's sidebar.
• Give the old address and the new one.
• Set one up whenever you change a live page's address.
• They are the fix for a link somebody else controls.

When you need one

You renamed a page's address. Anyone who bookmarked the old one, and every site linking to it, is now getting nothing.

You deleted a page. Send it somewhere sensible rather than leaving people at a dead end.

You moved from another website. Old addresses that people have saved can be pointed at the matching new pages.

You printed something. A short address on a flyer can point at whatever page you want it to, including a different one next season.

Setting one up

Enter the old address and the new one. Paste them however you have them. A full address copied out of a browser, or just the part after your domain, both work: the form sorts the format out and tells you if something cannot be used.

Test it in a private window afterwards. It is two fields and it is still worth thirty seconds of checking, because a redirect that quietly does not work looks identical to one that does until somebody complains.

Why not just leave the old page up

Because two pages saying nearly the same thing is worse than one. Search engines cannot tell which is the real one, you have to remember to update both, and visitors land on whichever they found first.

One page and a redirect to it keeps everything pointing in one direction.

Redirects are not the answer to everything

If you are setting up a lot of them, it is worth asking whether the addresses need to keep changing. A page address is meant to outlive the wording on the page: name it for the thing rather than for this year's campaign, and you will not need a redirect next year.