Redirections and Wordpress

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Which redirect do a I use
  • 301 Permanent Redirects
  • 307 Temporary Redirects
• Redirection in Wordpress
  • Adding a 301 Permanent Redirect in Wordpress
  • Adding a 307 Temporary Redirect in Wordpress

Has your content moved to a new place url permanently, or are you temporarily pointing a url to a different location, the type of redirect you use matters. While browsers and search engines are not elephants, they do remember things. If a browser or search engine sees that a url is using a 301 permanent redirect, it will assume this is permanent and not look for changes each time it checks a page. This could mean your future changes are not reflected to visitor until they clear their browser cache, or the search engine looks at your site again.

Which redirect do a I use

When redirecting a page, there are certain redirect codes that are used. For the purposes of your Wordpress site, you'll generally want to use a 301 or 307.

301 Permanent Redirects

Permanent redirects are for when content has permanently moved to a new location. Maybe you decided that x.com is better than twitter.com and plan to use this new url. This new location will not change in the future. For example /about-us/staff gets moved to /company/staff. 

301: /about-us/staff -> /company/staff

For efficiency, browsers don't check if a 301 redirect is updated. They remember the redirect and immediately go to the redirected url, without checking if the redirect has changed.
If removed the redirect at /about-us/staff or pointed it to a different url, users who had already been redirected will continue to be redirected

307 Temporary Redirects

Temporary redirects are used when the redirect may change in the future. For example /thanksgiving-fundraiser-> /fundraisers/2023/thanksgiving.

307: /thanksgiving-fundraiser-> /fundraisers/2023/thanksgiving

Redirection in Wordpress

Most Wordpress sites use the Redirection plugin for redirecting to different pages. 

Adding a 301 Permanent Redirect in Wordpress

By default the Redirection plugin creates permanent redirects

1. Make sure you've installed the redirection plugin
2. In the Wordpress admin go to Tools->Redirection on the left hand menu
3. At the top of the page click add new.
4. Enter the source url you'd like to redirect from, you'll probably want to select ignore slash
5. Enter the target url you'd like to redirect to.
6. Click Add Redirect

Adding a 307 Temporary Redirect in Wordpress

1. Make sure you've installed the redirection plugin
2. In the Wordpress admin go to Tools->Redirection on the left hand menu
3. At the top of the page click add new
4. Enter the source url you'd like to redirect from, you'll probably want to select ignore slash
5. Enter the target url you'd like to redirect to.
6. Click show advanced options 
7. Under the row When matched select 307 - Temporary Redirect.
8. Click Add Redirect

In the past, 302 was used as the code for temporary redirects. If you're using this for a temporary redirect, it's fine in most cases, but in the future it's better to use 307.