Redirect maps for rebuilt websites

Rebuild the site. Keep every old link working.

A new website almost always changes its page addresses. Every old address that is not sent somewhere becomes a dead end for bookmarks, search results and links from other sites. Paste your old addresses and your new pages: Trail Signs matches them, finds the chains, loops and dead ends, and writes exact 301 rules for Apache and nginx.

Open the Map Maker See the fourteen checks

Free maps up to 50 rules. Trail Pass $1.95 a month or $19.50 a year: free during preview, no checkout yet.

/rates.php?id=12 /stay/rates/group

/about-us.html /about

/our-cabins.html /cabins

/stay/cabins /cabins

From the worked example: a campground site rebuilt with new page names.

Three ways an old link goes wrong

The worked example has eleven lines. Trail Signs found all three of these in it, before any of it reached a server.

The switchback

Old page A points at B, and B was moved again to C. Visitors take two hops and search engines may stop following. Trail Signs collapses every chain to one hop.

1 chain collapsed in the example

The circle trail

Two rules point at each other, or a page points at itself. The browser goes round until it gives up with "too many redirects". Those rules are left out and named.

3 loop or self rules stopped in the example

The dead end

An old address with no target answers 404. Trail Signs looks through your new page list for the same page name or the closest words and suggests a target you can accept.

2 targets suggested in the example

The trail, marked

Five steps, one page. Your addresses are sent to this site to work out the map and are not kept: nothing is stored until you save it to a Trail Book.

Paste the old addresses. From your old sitemap, a crawl, or your analytics. Add a new address on the same line when you know it: /about-us.html -> /about.
Paste the new page list. Optional, and worth it: it powers the suggestions and the "target does not exist" check.
Read the trail report. Fourteen checks, each with its line number: chains, loops, conflicts, case twins, query strings, off-site targets.
Walk an address. The test pad answers with the exact rule, status and final address your server will give.
Copy the signs. Apache .htaccess, nginx, or a plain list for a host's redirect panel.

Exact rules, not prefix guesses

Apache's short Redirect /blog /news also moves /blog/any-post to /news/any-post. Trail Signs writes one anchored rule per page instead, escapes the characters that mean something to the server (%, $, spaces, dots), and puts query-string rules first so they are not swallowed.

How each format is written

# Redirect map from hillbillyhosting.org (Trail Signs). 6 rule(s), 301 = moved for good.
# Put these lines in the .htaccess file of your site's top folder, ABOVE any CMS block (for example "# BEGIN WordPress").
# Needs Apache 2.4 with mod_rewrite. Each rule matches one exact address (not everything under it).
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
# line 4: /rates.php?id=12 -> /stay/rates/group
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=12$
RewriteRule ^rates\.php/?$ /stay/rates/group [R=301,L,NE,QSD]
# line 1: /about-us.html -> /about
RewriteRule ^about-us\.html/?$ /about [R=301,L,NE]
# line 2: /our-cabins.html -> /cabins
RewriteRule ^our-cabins\.html/?$ /cabins [R=301,L,NE]
# line 3: /stay/cabins -> /cabins
RewriteRule ^stay/cabins/?$ /cabins [R=301,L,NE]
# line 5: /contact.html -> /contact
RewriteRule ^contact\.html/?$ /contact [R=301,L,NE]
# line 6: /Contact.html -> /contact
RewriteRule ^Contact\.html/?$ /contact [R=301,L,NE]
</IfModule>

# Redirect map from hillbillyhosting.org (Trail Signs). 6 rule(s), 301 = moved for good.
# Paste inside the server { } block of your site, then run: nginx -t && nginx -s reload
# If a location below already exists in your config, keep one of them (nginx refuses duplicates).
# line 4
if ($request_uri = "/rates.php?id=12") { return 301 "/stay/rates/group"; }
# line 1
location = "/about-us.html" { return 301 "/about$is_args$args"; }
location = "/about-us.html/" { return 301 "/about$is_args$args"; }
# line 2
location = "/our-cabins.html" { return 301 "/cabins$is_args$args"; }
location = "/our-cabins.html/" { return 301 "/cabins$is_args$args"; }
# line 3
location = "/stay/cabins" { return 301 "/cabins$is_args$args"; }
location = "/stay/cabins/" { return 301 "/cabins$is_args$args"; }
# line 5
location = "/contact.html" { return 301 "/contact$is_args$args"; }
location = "/contact.html/" { return 301 "/contact$is_args$args"; }
# line 6
location = "/Contact.html" { return 301 "/contact$is_args$args"; }
location = "/Contact.html/" { return 301 "/contact$is_args$args"; }

/rates.php?id=12 -> /stay/rates/group
/about-us.html -> /about
/our-cabins.html -> /cabins
/stay/cabins -> /cabins
/contact.html -> /contact
/Contact.html -> /contact

Two kinds of pass

Day hike

Free

Maps up to 50 rules
All fourteen checks and suggestions
Apache, nginx and plain-list output to copy
Test pad, one address at a time
Trail Book with 1 saved map

Trail Pass

$1.95 a month

or $19.50 a year

Maps up to 2,000 rules
Test pad, 50 addresses at once
Download as files: .htaccess, nginx, list, CSV
Trail Book with 25 saved maps, duplicate a map

Free during preview. Checkout is not open yet, so every Trail Pass feature is on for everyone and nobody is charged.

Pricing, cancelling and refunds

What this is not

Not a web host. Redirect Trail sells no hosting and recommends no host.
Not a checker. It never fetches your site or looks anything up; it works only with the addresses you paste.
Not a nonprofit. The .org is a name; this is a WeldonPC.com service.
Not a guarantee. Server setups differ. Test the rules on your server (the test pad shows what they should do).