Uses of redirects

Redirects are a common technique for routing a visitor to a page other than the one requested. Below are common scenarios for using redirects.

Redirecting from an archived asset

You archived an asset, and you want to redirect visitors to a replacement asset. For example, the asset at http://brightspot.com/asset-a is archived, and you want visitors to view the asset at http://brightspot.com/asset-b.

For more information, see Redirecting from an archived asset.

Redirecting from an archived site

You archived a site, and moved all the assets to a new site with the same path. For example, you decided to replace the site old.com with new.com. One asset has the path /headlines/current-headlines. Visitors who bookmarked the asset at http://old.com/headlines/current-headlines are automatically redirected to http://new.com/headlines/current-headlines.

For more information, see Adding a site redirect.

Vanity URLs

URLs can be long, sometimes extremely long, and difficult for visitors to memorize. A vanity URL is a URL that is much shorter, much easier to remember, and redirects the visitor to the actual asset. For example, your biggest seller in the digital store is at URL http://www.acme.com/store/products/plumbing/residential/ID-980-145-gadget. You can add a vanity URL http://www.acme.com/gadget that redirects to the original URL.

Vanity URL redirects are also useful if you have multiple assets from which you want to direct to a destination asset. Instead of having to add each to the destination asset's URLs widget, which can get long in such cases, you can direct multiple assets to a single destination using a vanity redirect.

For more information, see Adding vanity redirect URLs.

Slug change

An asset's slug changed, and you want the URL to reflect the new slug. For example, when you first published the asset Case Studies, the slug was case-studies, and the full URL was http://brightspot.com/case-studies. Later, you updated the asset's headline to Latest Case Studies, so the slug is now latest-case-studies. To preserve SEO ranking and existing bookmarks, Brightspot does not automatically change the URL. You can manually add a URL with the new slug, and redirect to it from the URL with the previous slug.

For more information, see Changing an asset's permalink.

Path change

It is difficult to design a URL architecture that anticipates all of a publication's future uses. For example, a news site has the Sports section under the Leisure section, so the path to the sports assets start with http://brightspot.com/leisure/sports. Several years later, the managing editor decides that Sports should be its own section, so the path for all sports assets is now http://brightspot.com/sports. You can use redirects from the old path to the new path.

For more information, see Adding wildcard redirects.

Modifying query strings

A query string is the portion of a URL following a question mark. For example, in the URL http://brightspot.com?article-id=12705, the query string is article-id=12705. Over time, a publication's architecture may change such that the query strings are changed or become obsolete entirely. You can manage the old incoming query strings so you can, for example, append the query string ?source=oldSite to keep track of from where the user is coming, what actions they took, and other information.

For more information, see Adding vanity redirect URLs, Adding wildcard redirects, and Adding a site redirect.