Redirection Plugin and Regular Expressions
-
I am using Wordpress and the Redirection plugin.
I have recently launched a new site and while it was in development, a lot of broken pages were created and indexed. These are terminating in 404s.
I am looking to redirect all traffic from: /replay/postname/ to the homepage. When I use this regular expression:
Source: /replay/*
Target: /
it removes the /replay/ but leaves the postname.
Any idea how I could redirect all traffic inside of /replay/ to the homepage?
Thanks a bunch, Josh
-
wow, fantastic. Very helpful - really appreciate it!
-
A bit more detail:
/ begins the regular expression - from here on we're replacing what evaluates as TRUE
replay looks for the string "replay" in the URL
\ is an escape character, meaning evaluate what follows as is. We need to escape because / has a specific meaning in regex, but we want it to actually look for a slash
/ follows the escape character, so now its searching for "replay/"
. means any character other than line-break
- means this part is present 0, 1 or many times. You want "anything after replay/" so we repeat the . regex with a ... arriving at (.) The parenthesis tell the * which part its supposed to work on
-
That did it! Thanks!
Do you mind explaining that syntax for me?
-
In regular expressions the / character denotes the end and beginning. Try this instead:
source: /replay/(.)*
target: /
The source can be parsed as "start at replay, escape a / into the string, then any other characters or none at all."
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
Hi, Newbie alert! I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly. The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags. Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new? Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case? Thx in anticipation.
Technical SEO | | ztalk1120 -
301 redirect Question
Hi all, I have a client who has a domain lets say www.xyz.de which is redirected 301 to www.zyx.de. Now they're working on a relaunch and they want to use the www.xyz.de as their origibnal doman after that. So, at the end the www.zyx.de - which is indexed by Google - should be redirected to www.xyz.de. It vice versa. So the redirect becomes the original and the original becomes the redirect 😕 Is there anything we have to care off? Or will that run into the hell? Thanx. Seb.
Technical SEO | | TheHecksler0 -
My site is not being regularly crawled?
My site used to be crawled regularly, but not anymore. My pages aren't showing up in the index months after they've been up. I've added them to the sitemap and everything. I now have to submit them through webmaster tools to get them to index. And then they don't really rank? Before you go spouting off the standard SEO resolutions... Yes, I checked for crawl errors on Google Webmaster and no, there aren't any issues No, the pages are not noindex. These pages are index,follow No, the pages are not canonical No, the robots.txt does not block any of these pages No, there is nothing funky going on in my .htaccess. The pages load fine No, I don't have any URL parameters set What else would be interfereing? Here is one of the URLs that wasn't crawled for over a month: http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-st-louis
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Apache Rewrite Verse Redirect
I put in a request with my IT team to implement some 301 redirects. We recently launched a major redesign and there multiple version of some pages with different URLs. They asked why they could not do Apache Rewrites, so it was not necessary to return an HTTP header. I know Google's Webmasters best practices is to use 301 redirects. I am not familiar with the technical aspects of Apache et al. Are there advantages to using a rewrite? Thanks
Technical SEO | | SuperMikeLewis0 -
260k 301 redirects
Hello, I just found that some of the urls on my site have both ugly characters and some other things I'd like to fix (such as ---- into a single - ) After some local tests i've seen that If i leave some imperfections there will be 48k different urls on the other hand if the renaming procedure is strict i'll have around 260k out of 2.3M urls to be renamed. If I'm going to do this I'll create new canonicals meta tag and redirect old urls with 301 headers to the new location. The content will not change. My big doubt is SEO wise, I know that I'll have better urls, but aren't those too much redirects on a single day? what would you do if you wish to have shipshape urls and know some of these are crap? thanks
Technical SEO | | mylittlepwny0 -
Question concerning a 302 Redirect
Hi! I've already done some research on redirects, but I still have a question concerning a 302 redirect implemented at the homepage of a website. The Website www.domainA.com has a 302 redirect to www.domainA.com/content/.... Also all subsequent pages have the /content/ directory in their URLs: e.g domainA.com/content/products First thing I was wondering about, was the use of a redirect to a new site using an additional directory /content/... Why would anyone do this? Would it be enough to replace the 302 with a 301 redirect, or would you recommend to change the entire structure and eliminate this /content/ directory? The most logical structure would be www.domainA.com/products/.., and not www.domainA.com/content/products, right? Second thing: Given that 302 means temporary redirect, what are the actual implications when redirecting from domainA.com to domainA.com/content? I've heard that 302 redirects don't pass linkjuice and are detrimental for the site's rankings... What are the actual implications concerning the example above (302 redirect from domainA.com to domainA.com/content ? Would be great to get some advice about the first problem and maybe some insights about the second one concerning 302s in general. Thanks in advance! Cheers, Chris
Technical SEO | | adwordize0 -
Redirect and ranking
Wehave 2 websites for the same keyword Website 1 is indexed on place 2 but we do not like that name any longer it does not fit our long term marketing Website 2 is indexed on place 5 and this domain fits better What will happen if we redirect website 1 to website 2? Fall down to postion 5 Fall down to position 5 and after a certain period we get back at position 2 or 3 thanx in advance for your reply
Technical SEO | | turnon0