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    4. Can some sort of wildcard redirect be used on a single folder path?

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    Can some sort of wildcard redirect be used on a single folder path?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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    • MJTrevens
      MJTrevens last edited by

      We have a directory with thousands of pages and we are migrating the entire site to another root URL. These folder paths will not change on the new site, but we don't want to use a wildcard to redirect EVERYTHING to the same folder path on the new site.

      Setting up manual 301 redirects on this particular directory would be crazy. Is there a way to isolate something like a wildcard redirect to apply only to a specific folder?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Christy-Correll
        Christy-Correll Staff last edited by

        Hi Corp Analytics,

        Alex has raised some important questions. Did you see his response? Let us know so we can help, thanks!

        Christy 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Xiano
          Xiano Subscriber last edited by

          I'm not sure I entirely understand what you're trying to achieve. Could you post a few examples of what you would like to redirect (and to what) and what you wouldn't want to redirect? Also, which web server are you using (nginx, Apache, IIS...)

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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