New feature: redirects and 404 management

When you change the slug of a post or page, DynaBlogger keeps a "history" of the slugs for the document and automatically redirects any visits to an old slug to the new one, using a 301 status code so to signal to search engines that the redirect is permanent. This happens automatically.

However there are cases when old URLs predate the use of the DynaBlogger platform or when you just want to redirect an arbitrary path to something else.

We have pushed a new feature for DynaBlogger today concerning redirects and 404 management. You can now configure redirects from some specific paths on your site to a published post or page, or to a static URL either from the same site or another site.

It's pretty simple. All you need to do is head to Redirects from the sidebar, and you will see a list similar to the one in the picture below when you have some redirects already configured (your list might be empty the first time you see it):

If you click on New redirect you will be presented with a screen like the below where you can specify the path you want to redirect from, and either a target document (post or page) or - if you select Static as the redirect type - the target URL:

That's it. Now any visit to the path no longer valid will be redirected with a 301 status code to the destination document or URL, so at the same time we instruct search engines that the redirect is permanent. 

An interesting feature of the redirects management is that besides manual configuration, a redirect is created automatically when a 404 (page not found) occurs for the first time for a given path and a redirect for that path is not configured yet. These automatically created redirects are flagged as "unresolved", meaning that they are there waiting for you to configure the target post/page or URL. 

This feature can be particularly useful when you migrate from another platform (Wordpress and Ghost are currently supported) to DynaBlogger. In DynaBlogger you can configure the permalink format but depending on the configuration of your old site, you may or may not be able to configure the exact same permalink format in your DynaBlogger site. 

With the automatic creation of unresolved redirects when 404s occur, you can more easily keep an eye on request paths that no longer point to the expected content and fix them, which is quite important both for users and for the SEO performance of your site.

Get in touch if you have any questions about this feature.