Managing Redirects

About redirects

When dealing with publishing and unpublishing pages you will eventually need to make redirects. A redirect ensures that when a page is no longer available (404), the visitor and search engines are sent to a new page. Therefore the visitor won’t end up in a breaking journey which would result in a page not found.

Wagtail considers two types of configurable redirects depending on whether Permanent is checked or not:

  • Permanent redirect (checked by default)
  • Temporary redirect

For both redirects the visitor won’t experience a difference when visiting a page, but the search engine will react to these two type of redirects differently.

  • In the case of a temporary redirect a search engine will keep track of your old page and will index the redirected page as well.
  • With a permanent redirect, the search engine will mark the old page as obsolete and considers the new page as a replacement.

Note

As a best practice Wagtail will check redirects as permanent by default, in order to prevent the undermining of your search engine ranking.

Configuring redirects

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To configure redirects head over to ‘Redirects’, which can be found in the Settings menu, accessible via the left-hand menu bar.

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  • Add a redirect by clicking the Add redirect button in the top-right.
  • Search for redirects already configured by entering your search term in the search bar. The results will be automatically updated as you type.
  • Edit the details of a redirect by clicking the URL path in the listing.
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  • Set Redirect from to the URL pattern which is no longer available on your site.
  • Set the From site if applicable (for eg: a multisite environment).
  • Check whether the redirect is Permanent or temporary (unchecked).

As a last step you can either redirect to a new page within Wagtail or you can redirect the page to a different domain outside of Wagtail.

  • Select your page from the explorer for Redirect to a page.
  • Set a full-domain and path for Redirect to any URL.

Note

Keep in mind a redirect will only be initiated if the page is not found. It will not be applied to existing pages (200) which will resolve on your site.