WordPress Redirect Plugins: Best 5 for Setting Redirects with ease
Are you worried about the broken links and deleted posts on your WordPress website?? Well, worry no more. Here we are with the solution. Check it out!!If you are a WordPress Website owner for a long, you might need to make some changes in your website. These changes might be anything from deleting posts or pages to migrating content to complete redesigning. There although is a possible chance that in making these changes, the URL structure of the website might change.
In such a case, you’d want to redirect the visitor to a message or a link to the new page. So, let’s check out some of the best WordPress Redirect Plugins that will help you in guiding the visitor to the proper location of your WordPress content. Before proceeding further let’s first understand what the redirects are and how they work.
Redirect is a medium through which your website sends a quick message to the visitor’s browser telling them that the page they want to visit has been moved. You can also provide the link to the new page, to which you want to redirect the visitor or can redirect automatically.
Different Types of Redirects
There are five types of redirects that could be used in different situations. You must have come across a few of these in the past but must be unsure of how and where to use them!!Let’s just find out.
301 – Permanent Redirect
A 301 redirect is a Permanent Redirect. It informs search engines that the page location to the page they are intended to visit has been permanently changed. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.302 – Temporary Redirect
It is a Temporary Redirect which is used to tell search engines that a page location changed for now, but not forever. It simply means that the page location has been changed or moved temporarily.303 – See Other Redirect
There are some pages that hold one-time-only data (like a payment form), you always want to prevent such pages from being bookmarked or refreshed. In such a case a server may answer with 303 which simply means that if you submitted a form, visit this URL and change the method how you did that. It is a Temporary Redirect. This type of redirect is used in high traffic e-commerce sites or membership sites in the checkout process. It makes sure that the pages holding one-time data aren’t bookmarked or refreshed.307 – Temporary Redirect
It is a Temporary Redirect and very similar to 303 with some changes i.e. if you have submitted a form, visit this URL and do it again the same way.308 – Permanent Redirect
It is a redirect that functions exactly same as 307 but with a permanent status.Now, the main question that arises in our mind here is that why do we need to redirect the visitor? Why can’t we just make the changes or delete any post and leave the links broken!!
The reason to use redirects is that deleted posts and broken links can hurt the ranking of your website badly. A popular post and frequently visited page is shown higher in search engine results and is referenced by other websites. If you want to remove or update it, the resulting broken links can hurt your page/website ranking. If you want your website to rank higher in the search engine results it becomes very crucial to redirect these broken links or deleted posts. Thus, from SEO point of view, it becomes very important to use a redirect to your home page or location of updated content to make the things work in your favor.
Top 5 WordPress Redirect Plugins: Comparison Chart
| Plugin | Active Installs | Rating | Compatibility with WordPress | Wildcard Redirect | 404 Error Monitoring | Custom Post Types |
| Redirection | 600,000+ | 4.2 | Up to 4.7.2 | No | Yes | Yes |
| Quick Page/Post Types | 200,000+ | 4.6 | Up to 4.6 | No | No | Yes |
| Simple 301 Redirect | 200,000+ | 4.4 | Up to 4.7.2 | Yes | No | Yes |
| SEO Redirection | 60,000+ | 4.6 | Up to 4.7.2 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Safe Redirect Manager | 30,000+ | 4.8 | Up to 4.8 | Yes | No | Yes |
Redirection
Redirection is one of the most popular if not the most popular WordPress Redirect Plugin. It offers a wide range of features to help you with the redirection.
Some of the primary features it offers are
- 404 error monitoring i.e it captures a log of 404 errors. It also allows you to easily highlight these to 301 redirects.
- All URLs can be redirected, except the deleted pages or broken links.
- Automatically add a 301 redirection when a post’s URL changes.
- You need not worry about Apache .htaccess, as it works entirely inside WordPress.
Quick Page / Post Redirect Plugin
Quick Page / Post Redirect Plugin helps you to redirect WordPress deleted pages/posts, broken links to the new page/post of your choice. You can quickly add different types of redirects(301, 302, 307, meta) to your WordPress pages or posts. This plugin has two easy to use redirect functionalities – “Quick Redirects” and “Individual Redirects”
Now, for standard 301 redirects, Quick Redirects is very useful. These are simple to add and don’t need to have an existing page or post. All you need to do is enter the request URL and the destination URL and it does the rest.
The Individual Redirects are for content already existing on your website. It adds a meta box to the edit screen and enables you to specify the redirect location and type. It also allows you to redirect menu items, duplicate posts or location on your existing site. Similar to Redirection it is free and available in the WordPress repository.
Some of its key features are:
- Works with WordPress Nav Menus.
- You can set a redirected page or menu item to open in a new window.
- Plugin Clean up functions for those who decide they may want to remove all plugin data on uninstall.
Simple 301 Redirects
Simple 301 Redirects is easy to use tool that primarily deals with 301 redirection type. It is a very handy plugin and is very useful in changing domains or hosts of your website. It is a very useful tool if you wish to preserve the page ranking of your website. The old links will rest unharmed and user traffic will be directed to your new content. You can also use Wildcards with Simple 301 Redirects Plugin and to use Wildcards, you just need to check the “Use Wildcards” checkbox. This plugin is available for free and could be downloaded from WordPress Repository.
SEO Redirection
SEO Redirection Plugin helps you to create and manage 301 redirections without requiring knowledge of Apache .htaccess files. You can set up all types of redirection including 301,302 or 307 redirects. This plugin is very useful especially when you want to migrate pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress website.
Some of its highlighting features are:
- Build almost all types of redirection for your site 301,302 or 307 easily.
- Supports wildcard redirection.
- All URLs can be redirected, not just ones that don’t exist.
- You can redirect folders and all its content.
- Full logs for all redirected URLs.
Safe Redirect Manager
Safe Redirect Manager Plugin is simple, safe, and straight to the point. Instead of using the WordPress options for storing redirects, it uses a custom post type.This is much more flexible and lighter on the server. This plugin uses the wp_safe_redirect function that only allows redirects to whitelisted hosts for security purposes. The plugin automatically manages whitelisting hosts for you. This plugin works well with Multisite. This is a very handy function if you are concerned about the security of redirects. You can also specify which kind of redirect you want (301, 302, etc.) from the settings screen.
These were some WordPress Redirect Plugins that I would strongly recommend you to use. You can choose any one, that suits your needs better. But, there are some other very useful plugins that are very efficient in performing a specifically directed task. Let us talk about them as well,
Bonus Plugins
There are a Plethora of plugins in the WordPress plugin repository. Also, there are a number of plugins available for advanced users and provide a very specific functionality. Let’s discuss some plugins that you would find very helpful while redirection:Blogger To WordPress
Blogger to WordPress is a very useful plugin that automates setting up one to one mapping between Blogger.com blog posts and new WordPress blog post. This plugin handles traffic redirection in a way that visitors will be redirected from old post to the same post on the new WordPress blog on one to one basis.Here are some key features of this plugin
- No change is required on WordPress end. Everything is handled by the plugin itself.
- The new configuration wizard helps you setup redirection without many efforts.
- Supports importing from multiple Blogger.com blogs.
Easy HTTPS Redirection
The Easy HTTPS Redirection plugin is very handy tool especially when you have installed SSL certificate on your site and HTTPS is not working correctly. You can redirect all the web pages or a few chosen pages as per your need. It also comes with the ability to force load static files, such as images, CSS, js, etc., using HTTPS.Easy HTTPS Redirection plugin allows an automatic redirection to the “HTTPS” URL of the site and makes your site SSL compatible. You can download it from the WordPress repository and is available for free.
Some of its key features are
- Auto-redirects the whole domain and every URL gets redirected to the HTTPS version automatically.
- Auto-redirects few pages and the user can enter the URLs that gets auto redirected to the HTTPS version.
- Force load static files (images, js, CSS etc) using an HTTPS URL.
How to Redirect a WordPress Website
Now, as we have talked about all the different types of Redirects, various types of plugins. Let’s just see how can we use this information to Redirect our WordPress Websites using below methods.How to Install a WordPress Redirect Plugin?
To Demonstrate you, I am going to show how you how to install the Redirection Plugin.Installing Redirection plugin is a very easy task, all you need to do is,
Step 1: Installing Redirection plugin is a very easy task, all you need to do is,
Step 2: Install the Redirection plugin from the WordPress repository or by searching it within your dashboard and activate it.
Step 3: After activating the plugin, go to Tools > Redirection to setup your redirects.
Step 4: Define the Source URL (URL you want to replace) and the Target URL (new URL, you want it to redirect to).
Step 5: Click on Add Redirection. A 301 redirection type will be added automatically.
After talking about WordPress redirect plugins let’s have a look at the alternatives method to set WordPress redirect without the use of plugins by using .htaccess.
Setting Up Redirects Using .htaccess Manually
You can also set 301 Redirects using .htaccess, a web server configuration file. These redirects are fast but a small mistake in .htaccess code can make your WordPress site inaccessible. It may start showing Internal Server Error and may ruin the page ranking of website badly. Thus, it becomes very important that you backup your .htaccess file before making any changes.Now, to edit your .htaccess file, you will need to connect to your website using an FTP client. You can find .htaccess file in your WordPress site’s root directory. Since .htaccess is a hidden system file, make sure your FTP client is configured to show hidden files. This is commonly an option in the program’s preferences/options.
Instructions
Create an empty text file using a text editor such as notepad, and save it as .htaccess using a text editor. and write the below-mentioned code for the desired redirect.Here, we will redirect to the “example.com” domain.
For 301 redirects
This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain permanently.
Redirect 301 / http://example.com/
For 302 Redirect
This will redirect your entire website to any other domain temporarily.
Redirect 302 / http://example.com/
Redirect index.html to a specific subfolder
Allows you to redirect index.html to a specific subfolder
Redirect /index.html http://example.com/newdirectory/
Redirect an old file to a new file path
Redirect old file path to the new file path
Redirect/olddirectory/oldfile.html http://example.com/newdirectory/newfile.html
Redirect to a specific index page
Provides a Specific Index Page (Set the default handler)
DirectoryIndex index.html
Now, upload this file, make sure to name it to .htaccess.
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude I must say that setting up WordPress Redirects is very easy. All you need to do is to select the appropriate method of doing it. If you are looking for a perfect WordPress Website, try using TemplateToaster. It is an easy to use WordPress Theme Builder for making WordPress themes without touching even a single line of code. It provides support for all the WordPress Redirect Plugins and provides you a lot more flexibility to help you design your perfect website in the easiest possible way. Hopefully, you find your perfect solution here if not hit us with your suggestions, questions, and tips in the comments section below.credit: https://blog.templatetoaster.com/best-wordpress-redirect-plugins/
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