Redirects

The Redirects tool let you add virtual URLs (or paths) to your solution. Provided the path does not actually exist on your solution, the 404-handler on your IIS server will then redirect the request to the link you provided.

The Redirects tool is meant for simple setups - in more advanced scenarios please create your redirects directly in the web.config or IIS.

Please note, that if a page with the same path as the virtual URL exists, no redirect will happen as you will not activate the 404-handler. The IIS server must be set up to resend 404 to the Dynamicweb 404-handler (Admin/Public/404.aspx).

To set up redirects go to Settings > Web and Http > Redirects (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Redirects

To add a redirect click Add in the toolbar and configure the redirect (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Creating a redirect

You must do the following:

• Provide a virtual path – e.g. news, in which case the path will be /news, so the URL without www.mydomain.com
• Provide a link to redirect visitors to when they try to access the path
• Specify the website you want the direct path to apply to. This is only required if you have two redirects with the same virtual path, e.g. /news, and want to direct visitors to different links depending on their context. You cannot use the selector as a limiter, for that use web.config.
• Select a status code for the virtual path:
  • 200 OK to keep the virtual path in the address bar
  • 301 Moved Permanently to redirect to the new URL and inform the search engine of the permanent move
  • 302 to redirect to the new URL and inform the search engine that the move is temporary. Rarely used.

You can deactivate or activate the redirect using the Active checkbox.

These are the database tables associated with the Direct Paths feature: