Redirects

In the Govstack Content Management System (CMS), you can create permanent (301) or temporary (302) redirects. You can also manage any redirects that are automatically created by Govstack anytime you move or rename a page on your website. Review the redirect functionality and learn how to create and manage redirects. 

Create a redirect

With the Govstack CMS, you can set up redirect links from your old website to your new Govstack website. This can be useful when you first launch your new site, as some users may go to the old website URL address looking for information. A redirect will automatically direct users from pages on your old website to the new website.

To add a redirect, you need to

1. Select the 'Content' tab in the Govstack CMS back office
2. Select the 'Redirects' tab located near the top of the page
3. Choose the 'Add new redirect' button
4. This will open the 'Add new redirect' slide-out panel
5. From the 'Sites' dropdown menu select 'Home' (if you have more than one homepage node, you'll need to select the appropriate hostname)
6. In the 'Original URL' field, paste the website path that will be redirected to the new page. To do this, copy everything after the main domain, from the "/" onward
7. Select the page destination from the 'Destination' dropdown menu by selecting the arrow to the left of the menu you would like to open
8. Within the 'Advanced Options' section, the default settings of 'Permanent' redirect and 'Disabled' query string should remain (you'll need to select 'enable' if the URL includes a query string or any information about a question mark)
9. Once you've finished, select the 'Add' button to complete the process

Advanced options

You can also complete a few advanced options:

• If you are creating a permanent 301 redirect, select the 'Permanent' radial button
  • Use this option if the page that is being redirected to a new page, will never be active again (usually used to redirect old website pages to new website pages)
• If you are creating a temporary 302 redirect, select the 'Temporary' radial button
  • Use this option if the page that is being redirected to a new page, is only meant to be temporary
• Select the 'Enabled' radial button if the destination requires a query string in the URL

Best practices for redirects

As a best practice when launching a new website, you should create permanent redirects for the following pages:

• Homepage
• Any landing pages
• Contact page
• About us page
• All main vertical menu pages

Next, we recommend setting up redirects for any top viewed pages from your old website. Typically, this would be the top 50 viewed pages on your website. However, if you have a large website, with over 1,000 pages, we would recommend adding redirects for the top 100 viewed pages from your old site.

Managing URL redirects

The Govstack CMS will automatically create a URL redirect anytime you move or rename a page in your menu or navigation. This helps reduce the number of broken links on your website and allows you to move and rename pages without having to set up new hyperlinks. 

To view and manage all redirects within your Govstack CMS, follow these steps:

1. Select the 'Content' tab in the Govstack back office
2. From here, choose the 'Redirect URL Management' tab
3. You will now see a log of all redirects that have been created within the Govstack CMS 

You can choose to remove any redirect or disable the redirect tracker.