Are you trying to create a redirect in WordPress? Not sure what a redirect is and why it is important? Don’t worry, we have got you covered in this beginner’s guide to WordPress redirects, we will cover what a redirect is, how to create a redirect in WordPress, why do you need, and when you should use redirects.
Ready? Let’s get started.
What is a Redirect in WordPress?
A redirect is a way for your website to send a quick message to your reader’s browser and tell them that the page they want to visit has been moved, so their browser can automatically point them to the new page of your choice.
There are various different types of redirects such as 301 redirect, 302 redirect, 307 redirect, etc.
However to keep this article simple and useful, we will only cover 301 redirects as that’s the most important.
Let’s take a look at why it is important by understanding the use case.
When do you need a 301 redirect in WordPress?
The primary reason to use 301 redirects is when your site or a page on your site has been moved, and you want to point the user to a new page instead.
This article idea came to us when one of our readers asked us for a way to redirect users from an old post to a new post.
– You need to create a redirect when you are planning on deleting a post or page in favor of new content.
– You need to create a redirect when you are planning on changing the permalinks of your post or page.
Why? Because not creating a redirect will cause your users to see a 404 not found error. Which is not only bad for users, but it can also impact your site’s SEO and hurt your search engine rankings.
That’s when 301 redirects become very important.
It allows you to tell search engines and your user’s browser that the page they are trying to reach has been permanently moved to a new location.
This allows for all your old page’s traffic and backlink (SEO) strengths to be transferred on to the new page.
Now that we have covered the why and when of redirects, let’s take a look at how you can create 301 redirects in WordPress using the different methods that are available.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
How to Create Redirects in WordPress (using Plugins)
An easier approach to create and manage 301 redirects is by using one of the many WordPress redirect plugins. This allows you to setup redirects without ever writing a single line of code.
1. Redirection
The simplest way to add and manage redirects in WordPress is by using the Redirection plugin. Install and activate the plugin. Once activated, visit Tools » Redirection to setup your redirects.
Redirection plugin not only allows you to setup redirects, it also helps you find out 404 errors on your WordPress site. You can then redirect those URLs to an appropriate destination. See this tutorial on how to track 404 pages and redirect them in WordPress.
2. Page Links to
Sometimes you may want to keep a post/page, but redirect it to another post or page. This is where Page Links to comes in handy. This simple plugin adds a meta box on your post edit screen where you can enter the address of the new location where you want to send your users.
3. Simple 301 Redirects
Another easy to use plugin is Simple 301 Redirects. As the name suggests, it makes 301 Redirects simple. Simply install and activate the plugin and then visit Settings » 301 Redirects to add your URLs.
Now while setting up 301 redirects using a WordPress plugin is easy, it has some minor performance setback. Based on your WordPress hosting provider, your WordPress redirects maybe a bit slower by some microseconds.
If you want to make your redirects faster, then you can do so by using the code method and .htaccess file.
Setting Up 301 Redirects in WordPress using .htaccess
Using the web server configuration file .htaccess, WordPress users can set up 301 redirects that are fast.
Please keep in mind that a small mistake in your .htaccess code can make your WordPress site inaccessible, and it may start showing Internal Server Error.
That’s why it is important that you backup your .htaccess file before making any changes.
To edit your .htaccess file, you will need to connect to your website using an FTP client. The .htaccess file resides in your WordPress site’s root directory.
If you can’t see your .htaccess file there, then you need to force your FTP client to show hidden files. (See why you can’t find .htaccess file on your WordPress site.)
You can edit .htaccess file in any plain text editor like Notepad.
Here is a simple redirect, where we are trying to send a user visiting an old post to a new post.
RewriteEngine On Redirect 301 /a-very-old-post/ http://yoursite.com/a-very-new-post/
You can add the code above preferably at the end of your .htaccess file.
That’s all. We hope this beginner’s guide to creating WordPress redirects helped you setup redirects on your site.
You may also want to check out these 9 most useful .htaccess tricks for WordPress.
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Great Information helps me to get out of a serious issue
Thanks for this! I needed the Redirect plugin. Didn’t know it was a thing
Hello, does this redirection works for a URL complete change?
For example, I’m using olddomain.com and I bought newdomain.com, and want to redirect olddomain.com to open up newdomain.com.
Any help on that??
Hi Emmanuel,
If you do that on your old website, then you will not be able to access it as the plugin will redirect you and your users to new domain name.
Oops, so how can I achieve this?
You can do that by adding the following code to the .htaccess file on your old site.
RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldomain.com [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]How can I redirect a single homepage to another domain but the rest of the pages from my redirected domain won’t be affected?/
Thank you for this guide. Helped me a lot for a client’s request.
I have a subdomain for affiliate store. I want to know how to redirect from my site page to subdomain page. Please help.
Thank You so so much! I have been blogging for about 8 months and have worked so hard to build my Pinterest account. It is where almost all my traffic comes from. A month ago I changed over to https and I didn’t realize until last night that none of my pins were redirecting to the https. I just fixed it all thanks to you!
thanks for the information. i have small doubt how can i redirect old post to new post without loss of comments. i mean i need previous comments
Thank you so much. I spent so many hours looking for this and finally got the answer here.
Just FYI – the screenshots are out of date I think. Under Add New Redirection, I just see Source/Target URL and Group.
Hi, I am trying to find a way to redirect to a single page similar to a 404 when a user enters a non-existent subdomain. for example if they mash the keyboard or make a typo when keying in the domain. I want to get rid of the standard wordpress ‘No Results Found…The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.’
Can someone point me to the solution of this problem? Or what this is called so I can try find the solution? All I’m getting is results about making my multisite a single url…
Thank you!
I only want to redirect when a visitor to my website clicks on an external link from my website. For example, if you were to click on a product from my page it would then redirect you first to a “You are being redirected” page, then off to the affiliate’s website.
I have been spending hours trying to do this. Please help. At this point I just want to know if it is possible with any wp plugin or any other workaround and if so how to do it.
Hi Abdul Rehman,
It is certainly possible, but we are not aware of a plugin that does it.
Is there a way to redirect using htaccess and that it will be opened in a new tab?
Hi
Is it possible to make a redirect from the wix platform to wordpress?
Hi Laura,
Please see our guide on moving Wix to WordPress.
Which plugin is best to create referrel links like:
Thanks
Hi Hafiz,
Thirsty Affiliates is the best way to manage your affiliate/referral links. Please see our guide on how to cloak affiliate links in WordPress.
How do I redirect from a wordpress blog (free) to a .com blog? I cannot install plugins in the free blog, so how could I do the redirect? Any advice?
Thanks in advance
Hello! I just created a website on WordPress.org and imported all of my content from my old site, example.wordpress.com (using WordPress.com). Is there a way to redirect all of the content from that site to my new one? The redirect instructions provided by WordPress gave me an error that the domain already exists, probably because it thought I was trying to create a new domain on WordPress.com.
My website traffic before is pretty minimal, so if anyone clicks on previous blog posts on my social channels, they’d be taken to the shut down version of my old site without the redirects – not the end of the world because I don’t have the following that would generate clicks at a later date, but you never know?
Any advice anyone has would be great!
Thanks,
Hannah
your lesson is very helpful. i like it.
Brilliant solution to reduce redirects for worpress!
For a few days, I’m looking to solve my WP redirects issues. I don’t find out better solution even read this content.
Here, I got few good points and try to reduce redirect to increase my page load speed.
Thanks!
Hello,
Please can you tell me – in the simple 301 redirect in the request URL column does wordpress / plugin take it as starting from http or https? Form where does it pick up this value?
Thanks for the article. It was useful. However the redirects using 301 redirect plugin is not working and landing on ‘Page does not exist’ page.
Hi Roshni,
It uses your WordPress Site Address as defined in WordPress Settings > General page.
Hi,
If I want to change the url structure of my posts, even then redirection is necessary? Isn’t that already taken care of in WP?
Also if I don’t redirect, will it be harmful for seo or search engines can figure out WP’s automatic redirection?
Very helpful. Thank you for the tip. Thank you for making it so simple.
Melissa
Thanks so much, I would’ve spent so much time doing it the long way. So happy Redirection worked instantly after install.
Hi Wpbeginner, I have a question about 301 permanent redirect and your advice will be great. I have an website about snoring and on that website are 2 related articles, 1 of them ranks for a lot of kws position 2-10 ( article A) and the other one just for 4-5 kws position 1-3 (article B). Both articles are on first google page and I want to permanent redirect the article B to A. Also on my website are some articles that point to article B and I want them to point to article A using same anchor texts. Now my question: Does this changes will pass the juice to article B to A and it will increase the article A rankings? And if I do this changes should I delete article B and reuse the content on other websites? Thank you very much for your time I will wait your answer, please excuse my bad english.
Hi Christian,
A 301 redirect will pass the link juice to new article. However, other search ranking factors would also apply to the new article, like relevance, context, keyword density, and more. Search engines may not find it relevant for the old keywords.
Hi WP beginner team,
A quick question.
Last year, when we changed URLs, WordPress was automatically redirecting Old urls to new urls.
But after a recent wordpress core update, the automatic redirection is not happening.
Would you be able to explain? Or am I missing anything
I am changing the domain of a wordpress website example.com to example.com.ng . I tried several 301 redirect rules in .htaccess , only the homepage redirects.
Please, assist me on the right code.
I have tried each seperately :
# BEGIN WordPress RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com.ng/$1 [R=301,L] # END WordPressand
RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com.ng/$1 [L,R=301,NC]None is working for me.
Thank you so much! I am very grateful.
Do I need to own the domain while redirecting? My Domain is getting expired on 31st July and I will be redirecting to a new domain. So while it is redirected do I need to own the domain after 31st?
Hey Shubham,
Yes, you will need that domain for your redirects to continue working.
I have over 850 old post which I recently deleted on my site due to some reasons. I want to ask if there is an easy and automated way to redirect all the old post to just one post. The methods you listed are easy to do if you are trying to redirect 1 or 2 posts. pls, help me. Your reply is important.
Is my question not also important? pls, your reply will be very appreciated. I need this.
You can try the permanent redirection methods from the cPanel. You can redirect all your 404 error into particular page.
Can I redirect my wp-login to a 401 (unauthorized) page using this plugin?
Hi, this is a very helpful post thank you, but it seems like the instructions are for redirects from WP to WP.
I am moving my website from WordPress to New Kajabi platform.
I have around 250 post/pages in WP to 301 redirect to my new kajabi site.
My domain name will be the same but the url structures and names of the posts/pages will be different.
Would the tools you recommend still work in my case? If yes, how?
I would appreciate your urgent reply, Thank you
Ahu
One thing I’m not clear about. Actually 2 things. 1 – Do I do the redirect on my new site or my old site. 2 – Where do I get a full list of my web pages from the old site?
Hi. I have a WordPress website with 100 posts. But most of the backlinks are to the post rather than to the homepage. Does any of the methods above redirect all the posts to the new URL also. I want a 301 redirect to my new domain from only one URL.not all the 90 URLs.but at the same time I don’t want to lose link juice from those posts. Please specify a way to first redirect all the old posts to old homepage then redirect the old homepage to new URL.
Hi, thanks for this info, very helpful.
So I decided to use the Simple 301 Redirects plugin… but did something REALLY dumb….
My wordpress site is still located in a subdirectory, with the Site address set to the main url (so WordPress Address URL is http://example.com/dev2017 and Site Address URL is http://example.com and .htaccess file updated)
There were some google search results showing the subdirectory address, so I installed the plugin and set a redirect with a wildcard for the subdirectory (obviously wasn’t thinking very well) and so now I can’t get in to the WP admin (as it’s in the subdirectory!!)
Is there a way to undo the redirects somehow? If I uninstall the plugin via FTP is it going to break the website???
Silly me….
Hey Ado,
First you need to deactivate plugin. After that you need to delete the .htaccess file in your site’s root folder. You will be able to login to your WordPress site. Once logged in you will need to regenerate .htaccess file. Simply visit Settings » Permalinks and then click on the save changes button without changing anything.
can i use request url with variable?
Could not have been easier! Thank you
Please, I changed the permalink of my WordPress site from
http://www.example.com/blog/%postname%tohttp://www.example.com/articles/%category%/%postname%and ALL my previous posts are affected.Please help me on how to setup a onetime redirection for ALL posts.
Thank you.
Hey Philemon,
You can do that by visiting the permalinks page under settings.
What is the best way to redirct adress like that: mywbsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mybook.pdf to normal web page. Tha it not normal wordpress page or post but is ranking on some keywoords and i would like to redirect to specyfic wordpres page. WHAT metod redirection should i use ? In that case simple 301 edirect plugin not work for me.
thanks
I have what may be a silly question. I have a site that is not a WordPress site (it’s using Shopify right now) and I am recreating the site on a new URL in WordPress. Will the redirect plugins still work to direct the old (Shopify) links to the New (WordPress) ones?
Hey Chrissy,
WordPress plugins will be installed on your WordPress site. They can redirect users to correct post/page/product once the user reaches your website. You will have to redirect Shopify visitors to your WordPress site, and then redirect plugins take it from there.
I’m able to create a redirect using the Redirection plug-in, but with this problem:
/old/ to /new/ works fine, but
/old to /new/ picks up pages that I do not want to redirect, such as
/old-2016 which then points to the non-existent /new/-2016.
I have an annoying problem. My site had the default settings for the blog posts, so I set up redirects and changed it to the %postname% option. Unfortunately, when I do that, my home (blog) page disappears. I’ve been chasing this problem for a while. Do you have a video with a solution? Or at least a way to point me in the right direction?
I don’t know if I understand your problem but my suggestion is not to redirect the url (using plugins or at the .htacess). You need to change de permalinks structure at the WP configuration. Somthing like this: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-change-custom-post-type-permalinks-in-wordpress/
I hope I could help.
Sorry about my english
When I change the permalink structure on the dashboard to %postname%, my home page http://charlesdshell.com/blog/ disappears. Or rather all blog posts and widgets disappear. All that’s left is a 404 error message.
All the redirects on all the pages work fine, but I can’t seem to get the home page to stick around.
I want to redirect my site form wordpress.com to wordpress.org. Is there any other way to redirect for free?
By the way,are those plugins free?
Hi Yeshna,
Unfortunately, you will have purchase the redirect service from WordPress.com to redirect your old WordPress.com blog traffic to your new WordPress.org blog.
I want to redirect my current live wordpress site (hosted by Hostgator) to a new domain name that I just bought from Godaddy. My questions are: 1) does my new domain name need to be hosted by HG in order to have my live site redirect to the new domain name. 2) does the new domain site need to have content already?
Thank you for your help.
Is there a way to do bulk redirects with one of these plugins? I want to update my permalinks to exclude the date, but don’t want to have to manually redirect 200+ posts. Please help!
Also, thanks for all of your great articles. You are great at putting them in non-technical terms.
i want to know if this could be done. have a user that had a site working, after i installed wordpress they wanted to change to wordpress so i created them a space and a site that calls wordpress/newsite.
now i want:
when typing my.old.url/site the information that comes out should be worpress/newsite
could this be possible whith the redirect.
I have deleted some of my posts from my website earlier.
Now, I am getting not found errors for those pages as expected.
I tried to redirect old URLs using a method provided by my hosting provider. But those redirects are not working.
I want to ask, if I use .htaccess redirects and keep previous redirects setup on hosting provider, can it cause any problems?
I need expert advice.
Ok, I am not sure why the .htaccess method is not working for me. I would like to avoid installing any more plugins on the client’s site. They have too many already for my liking. I’ve used your instructions because what I’ve used for redirect in the past didn’t seem to be working on her site for some reason. But this isn’t either. Not sure what the problem is. Have you run into this before? I’ve flushed the Permalinks, but am still getting a 404 when I try to go to the old URL I’ve rewritten.
I am having the ame problem here. It’s still not redirecting.
@Aslam & @Laura,
One little got ya with 301’s and wordpress via the .htaccess file is that you need to place your redirects between:
RewriteEngine On
And:
RewriteBase /
This is because wordpress has its own mods to the htaccess file to apply and changes the RewriteBase setting which I think causes problems with regular ol 301 redirects on shared hosting.
Now how wpbeginner chooses to do redirection on the site? .htaccess, Redirections plugins, or what?
Thanks,
I installed this plugin it’s coming under “Setting” tab rather than “Tool” option.
Thank you very much for the tip on 301 Redirects plugin, works like a charm!
I think in wordpress, there is no need to set redirection when changing slug of the post. It is done automatically. Right ?
If someone has bookmarked the old URL, for instance, or if the search engines have indexed the old URL and are still serving it in search results, you need to have a redirect in place so you aren’t losing traffic.