How to redirect customers to a new link
One of the worst experiences that users might get when browsing the Internet is jumping to bad URLs or getting back “404 files not found” pages.
This can happen when you update your content or your products, which leads to updates in URLs.
So what you can do to avoid that situation is to redirect your customers from the old URLs to the new ones, and the purpose of this post is to show you how to do that step-by-step in Joomla 3.x.
1. Make sure that you have your Redirect plugin enabled
Before you can use the redirect function of Joomla 3.x, you have to make sure that your Redirect plugin has been enabled.
Go to your Joomla Dashboard => Extensions => Plugins.
Search for Redirect and make sure that the plugin status is “Enable”.
2. Check the list of bad URLs
In the top menu, go to Components => Redirect.
You will see a list of expired URLs in your Joomla site
3. Enter new URLs to redirect your customers
From the above screen, you will have two options. Change the URL for the link on the list or create a new URL:
- To change URL for any link on the list, simply click on that link.
- To add a new URL, you can click New
In the field “New URL”, enter the new URL you would like to forward this expired URL to.
For example, in this picture below, we will redirect the customer from http://joomlashine.com/badurl to http://joomlashine.com/newurl.
Set the Status to Enabled and click Save.
Now every time customers accidentally visit http://joomlashine.com/badurl, they will be automatically redirected to the new link: http://joomlahine.com/newurl.
In summary,
That is how you redirect a 301 link. I hope this article helps you avoid 404 errors or duplicate content on your site.
Learn more: Add Canonical tag in Joomla and when to use the canonical tag instead of 301 redirects.
