Safe Redirect Manager

A WordPress plugin to safely manage your website's HTTP redirects.

Purpose

Safely manage your site's redirects the WordPress way. There are many redirect plugins available. Most of them store redirects in the options table or in custom tables. Most of them provide tons of unnecessary options. Some of them have serious performance implications (404 error logging). Safe Redirect Manager stores redirects as Custom Post Types. This makes your data portable and your website scalable. Safe Redirect Manager is built to handle enterprise level traffic and is used on major publishing websites. The plugin comes with only what you need following the WordPress mantra, decisions not options. Actions and filters make the plugin very extensible.

Installation

Install the plugin in WordPress. You can download a zip via GitHub and upload it using the WordPress plugin uploader ("Plugins" > "Add New" > "Upload Plugin").

Configuration

There are no overarching settings for this plugin. To manage redirects, navigate to the administration panel ("Tools" > "Safe Redirect Manager").

Each redirect contains a few fields that you can utilize:

"Redirect From"

This should be a path relative to the root of your WordPress installation. When someone visits your site with a path that matches this one, a redirect will occur. If your site is located at http://example.com/wp/ and you wanted to redirect http://example.com/wp/about to http://example.com, your "Redirect From" would be /about.

Clicking the "Enable Regex" checkbox allows you to use regular expressions in your path. There are many great tutorials on regular expressions.

You can also use wildcards in your "Redirect From" paths. By adding an * at the end of a URL, your redirect will match any request that starts with your "Redirect From". Wildcards support replacements. This means if you have a wildcard in your from path that matches a string, you can have that string replace a wildcard character in your "Redirect To" path. For example, if your "Redirect From" is /test/*, your "Redirect To" is http://google.com/*, and the requested path is /test/string, the user would be redirect to http://google.com/string.

"Redirect To"

This should be a path (i.e. /test) or a URL (i.e. http://example.com/wp/test). If a requested path matches "Redirect From", they will be redirected here. "Redirect To" supports wildcard and regular expression replacements.

"HTTP Status Code"

HTTP status codes are numbers that contain information about a request (i.e. whether it was successful, unauthorized, not found, etc). You should almost always use either 302 (temporarily moved) or 301 (permanently moved).

Note:

• Redirects are cached using the Transients API. Cache busts occur when redirects are added, updated, and deleted so you shouldn't be serving stale redirects.
• By default the plugin only allows at most 1000 redirects to prevent performance issues. There is a filter srm_max_redirects that you can utilize to up this number.
• "Redirect From" and requested paths are case insensitive by default.
• Developers can use srm_additional_status_codes filter to add status codes if needed.
• Rules set with 403 and 410 status codes are handled by applying the HTTP status code and render the default WordPress wp_die screen with an optional message.
• Rules set with a 404 status code will apply the status code and render the 404 template.
• Browsers heavily cache 301 (permanently moved) redirects. It's recommended to test your permanent redirects using the 302 (temporarily moved) status code before changing them to 301 permanently moved.

Filters

Default redirect status code

The default redirect HTTP status code can be changed using the srm_default_direct_status filter.

add_filter(
	'srm_default_direct_status',
	/**
	 * Set the default redirect status to 301 (Moved Permanently).
	 */
	function() {
		return 301;
	}
);

Redirect loops detection

By default redirect loop detection is disabled. To prevent redirect loops you can filter srm_check_for_possible_redirect_loops.

add_filter( 'srm_check_for_possible_redirect_loops', '__return_true' );

Only redirect if 404 occurs

By default every matched URL is redirected. To only redirect matched but not found URLs (i.e., 404 pages), use srm_redirect_only_on_404.

add_filter( 'srm_redirect_only_on_404', '__return_true' );

CLI commands

The following WP-CLI commands are supported by Safe Redirect Manager:

• wp safe-redirect-manager list

  List all of the currently configured redirects.

• wp safe-redirect-manager create <from> <to> [<status-code>] [<enable-regex>] [<post-status>]

  Create a redirect. <from> and <to> are required parameters.

  • <from>: Redirect from path. Required.
  • <to>: Redirect to path. Required.
  • <status-code>: HTTP Status Code. Optional. Default to 302.
  • <enable-regex>: Whether to enable Regular expression. Optional. Default to false.
  • <post-status>: The status of the redirect. Optional. Default to publish.

  Example: wp safe-redirect-manager create /about-us /contact-us 301

• wp safe-redirect-manager delete <id>

  Delete a redirect by <id>.

• wp safe-redirect-manager update-cache

  Update the redirect cache.

• wp safe-redirect-manager import <file> [--source=<source-column>] [--target=<target-column>] [--regex=<regex-column>] [--code=<code-column>] [--order=<order-column>]

  Imports redirects from a CSV file.

  • <file>: Path to one or more valid CSV file for import. This file should contain redirection from and to URLs, regex flag and HTTP redirection code. Here is the example table:

    source	target	regex	code	order
    /legacy-url	/new-url	0	301	0
    /category-1	/new-category-slug	0	302	1
    /tes?t/[0-9]+/path/[^/]+/?	/go/here	1	302	3
    ...	...	...	...	...

    You can also use exported redirects from "Redirection" plugin, which you can download here: /wp-admin/tools.php?page=redirection.php&sub=modules

  • --source: Header title for source ("from" URL) column mapping.

  • --target: Header title for target ("to" URL) column mapping.

  • --regex: Header title for regex column mapping.

  • --code: Header title for code column mapping.

  • --order: Header title for order column mapping.

• wp safe-redirect-manager import-htaccess <file>

  Import .htaccess file redirects.

Development

Setup

Follow the configuration instructions above to setup the plugin. We recommend developing the plugin locally in an environment such as WP Local Docker.

Testing

Within the terminal change directories to the plugin folder. Initialize your unit testing environment by running the following command:

bash bin/install-wp-tests.sh database username password host version

Run the plugin tests:

phpunit

Issues

If you identify any errors or have an idea for improving the plugin, please open an issue.

Translations

Safe Redirect Manager is available in English and other languages. A listing of those languages and instructions for translating the plugin into other languages is available on Translating WordPress. Many thanks to the contributors on the translation teams!

Support Level

Stable: 10up is not planning to develop any new features for this, but will still respond to bug reports and security concerns. We welcome PRs, but any that include new features should be small and easy to integrate and should not include breaking changes. We otherwise intend to keep this tested up to the most recent version of WordPress.

Changelog

A complete listing of all notable changes to Safe Redirect Manager are documented in CHANGELOG.md.

Contributing

Please read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for details on our code of conduct, CONTRIBUTING.md for details on the process for submitting pull requests to us, and CREDITS.md for a listing of maintainers of, contributors to, and libraries used by Safe Redirect Manager.

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