Sending an old address to a new one

When you rename a page, its old address stops working, and every link to it, every bookmark and every search result still points there. A URL redirect catches those visitors and forwards them to the new page instead of showing them an error.

A redirect goes live without a publish. The live site picks it up within a minute of saving, so take care when you experiment on a live site.

Adding one

Add permanent redirect, top right. Three fields:

Save, and it works within a minute. Type the address in a private window to check.

Always start URL A with a slash, and leave off the domain. It's a path on your own website, not a full address. URL B may be either.

Permanent or temporary?

Permanent is almost always the right answer. Choose Temporary only when you genuinely intend the old address to work again, because a temporary redirect leaves search engines pointing at an address that doesn't currently show anything.

Both are invisible to the visitor: they type the old address and land on the new page, with the new address in the bar.

Editing and deleting

The pencil on a row edits URL B and the status code only. The old address is fixed, because it's what identifies the redirect. To change the from address, delete the row and add a new one.

The bin deletes it, with a confirmation naming both addresses.

Rules for redirects

Two, and they stop you building something that loops:

• URL A and URL B can't be the same. A page can't redirect to itself.
• URL B can't be an address that already redirects somewhere else. If /a → /b exists, you can't add /c → /a. Point /c straight at /b instead.

Both refusals show as URL B cannot match an existing URL A.

What a redirect matches

It's an exact match on the path:

• No wildcards. /blog/* is not a thing; each address needs its own row.
• Case matters. /Contact and /contact are two different addresses.
• On a multi-language site, include the language. The redirect is checked before ClickWhale works out which language you're on, so the old address is the whole path: /en/old-page, not /old-page. A page that existed in two languages needs two redirects.
• The query string is ignored. /old-page?ref=flyer matches a redirect for /old-page, and the ?ref=flyer is dropped on the way through.

Redirects take priority over pages

A redirect is the very first thing checked on every request. Before the page lookup, before the language, before anything. So if you create a redirect whose URL A is the address of a page that still exists, the page becomes unreachable. Nothing warns you.

That's occasionally what you want (retiring a page without deleting it). Much more often it's the explanation for "this page vanished and I don't know why".

When to use a redirect

• You renamed a page or changed its address. ClickWhale doesn't leave anything behind at the old one, so this is the moment.
• You moved from another website. Take the old site's most-linked addresses and point each at its new equivalent. It's the single biggest thing you can do to keep your search ranking through a rebuild.
• You want a short address to hand out. /offer → a long campaign page.
• A page is gone for good and has no successor. Then don't: let it 404. Redirecting everything to the home page is worse than an honest error page for both visitors and search engines.

For a short address that points at a file rather than a page (a PDF menu, a price list) use Short addresses for your files instead.

Common issues