Over time, a documentation project may want to rename and move contents around. Redirects allow changes in a documentation project to happen without bad user experiences.
If you do not manage URL structures, users will eventually encounter 404 File Not Found errors. While this may be acceptable in some cases, the bad user experience of a 404 page is usually best to avoid.
- Built-in redirects ⬇️
- Allows for simple and long-term sharing of external references to your documentation.
- User-defined redirects ⬇️
- Makes it easier to move contents around
.. seealso::
:doc:`/guides/redirects`
This guide shows you how to add redirects with practical examples.
:doc:`/guides/best-practice/links`
Information and tips about creating and handling external references.
:doc:`/guides/deprecating-content`
A guide to deprecating features and other topics in a documentation.
- By default, redirects are followed only if the requested page doesn't exist (404 File Not Found error). If you need to apply a redirect for files that exist, This option is only available on some plan levels. Please ask support if you need it for some reason.
- :ref:`user-defined-redirects:page redirects` and :ref:`user-defined-redirects:exact redirects`
can redirect to URLs outside Read the Docs,
just include the protocol in
To URL, e.ghttps://example.com.
This section explains the redirects that are automatically active for all projects and how they are useful. Built-in redirects are especially useful for creating and sharing incoming links, which is discussed indepth in :doc:`/guides/best-practice/links`.
You can link to a specific page and have it redirect to your default version,
allowing you to create links on external sources that are always up to date.
This is done with the /page/ URL prefix.
For instance, you can reach the page you are reading now by going to https://docs.readthedocs.io/page/guides/best-practice/links.html.
Another way to handle this is the latest version.
You can set your latest version to a specific version and just always link to latest.
You can reach this page by going to https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/best-practice/links.html.
A link to the root of your documentation (<slug>.readthedocs.io/) will redirect to the :term:`default version`, as set in your project settings.
This works for both readthedocs.io (|org_brand|), readthedocs-hosted.com (|com_brand|), and :doc:`custom domains </custom-domains>`.
For example:
docs.readthedocs.io -> docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
Warning
You cannot use the root redirect to reference specific pages.
/ only redirects to the default version,
whereas /some/page.html will not redirect to /en/latest/some/page.html.
Instead, use :ref:`page_redirects`.
You can choose which is the :term:`default version` for Read the Docs to display. This usually corresponds to the most recent official release from your project.
A link to the root language of your documentation (<slug>.readthedocs.io/en/)
will redirect to the :term:`default version` of that translation.
This redirect is currently only active on |org_brand| (<slug>.readthedocs.io and :doc:`custom domains </custom-domains>`).
Root language redirects on |com_brand| can be enabled by contacting :doc:`support </support>`.
For example:
https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/ -> https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
Links to rtfd.io are treated the same way as readthedocs.io.
They are intended to be easy and short for people to type.
You can reach these docs at https://docs.rtfd.io.
The most useful and requested feature of redirects was when migrating to Read the Docs from an old host. You would have your docs served at a previous URL, but that URL would break once you moved them. Read the Docs includes a language and version slug in your documentation, but not all documentation is hosted this way.
Say that you previously had your docs hosted at https://docs.example.com/dev/,
you move docs.example.com to point at Read the Docs.
So users will have a bookmark saved to a page at https://docs.example.com/dev/install.html.
You can now set a Prefix Redirect that will redirect all 404's with a prefix to a new place. The example configuration would be:
Type: Prefix Redirect From URL: /dev/
Your users query would now redirect in the following manner:
docs.example.com/dev/install.html -> docs.example.com/en/latest/install.html
Where en and latest are the default language and version values for your project.
Note
If you were hosting your docs without a prefix, you can create a / Prefix Redirect,
which will prepend /$lang/$version/ to all incoming URLs.
A more specific case is when you move a page around in your docs. The old page will start 404'ing, and your users will be confused. Page Redirects let you redirect a specific page.
Say you move the example.html page into a subdirectory of examples: examples/intro.html.
You would set the following configuration:
Type: Page Redirect From URL: /example.html To URL: /examples/intro.html
Page Redirects apply to all versions of you documentation.
Because of this,
the / at the start of the From URL doesn't include the /$lang/$version prefix (e.g.
/en/latest), but just the version-specific part of the URL.
If you want to set redirects only for some languages or some versions, you should use
:ref:`user-defined-redirects:exact redirects` with the fully-specified path.
Exact Redirects are for redirecting a single URL, taking into account the full URL (including language and version).
You can also redirect a subset of URLs by including the $rest keyword
at the end of the From URL.
Say you're moving docs.example.com to Read the Docs and want to redirect traffic
from an old page at https://docs.example.com/dev/install.html to a new URL
of https://docs.example.com/en/latest/installing-your-site.html.
The example configuration would be:
Type: Exact Redirect From URL: /dev/install.html To URL: /en/latest/installing-your-site.html
Your users query would now redirect in the following manner:
docs.example.com/dev/install.html -> docs.example.com/en/latest/installing-your-site.html
Note that you should insert the desired language for "en" and version for "latest" to achieve the desired redirect.
Exact Redirects could be also useful to redirect a whole sub-path to a different one by using a special $rest keyword in the "From URL".
Let's say that you want to redirect your readers of your version 2.0 of your documentation under /en/2.0/ because it's deprecated,
to the newest 3.0 version of it at /en/3.0/.
This example would be:
Type: Exact Redirect From URL: /en/2.0/$rest To URL: /en/3.0/
The readers of your documentation will now be redirected as:
docs.example.com/en/2.0/dev/install.html -> docs.example.com/en/3.0/dev/install.html
Similarly, if you maintain several branches of your documentation (e.g. 3.0 and
latest) and decide to move pages in latest but not the older branches, you can use
Exact Redirects to do so.
You can use an exact redirect to migrate your documentation to another domain, for example:
Type: Exact Redirect From URL: /$rest To URL: https://newdocs.example.com/ Force Redirect: True
Then all pages will redirect to the new domain, for example
https://docs.example.com/en/latest/install.html will redirect to
https://newdocs.example.com/en/latest/install.html.
We also support redirects for changing the type of documentation Sphinx is building.
If you switch between HTMLDir and HTML, your URLs will change.
A page at /en/latest/install.html will be served at /en/latest/install/,
or vice versa.
The built in redirects for this will handle redirecting users appropriately.