Redirects

Overview

The Redirects interface allows you to send all of the visitors of a domain or particular page to a different URL. For example, if you create a page with a long URL, use the Redirects interface to add a redirect from a short URL to the long URL. Visitors can enter the short URL to access the content of the long URL.

Add a redirect

To add a redirect, perform the following actions:

1. Select a redirect type from the Type menu.

   • Permanent (301) — This setting notifies the visitor’s browser to update its records.
   • Temporary (302) — This setting does not update the visitor’s bookmarks.

2. Select a domain name from the menu, or select **All Public Domains** to redirect all of the domains that your cPanel account controls.

3. In the next text box, enter the rest of the URL from which you wish for the server to redirect visitors. For example, if you wish to redirect http://example.com/directory.file.html to another URL, enter directory/file.html in this text box.

4. In the Redirects to text box, enter the URL to which you wish to redirect users.

   Important:

   You must specify a protocol in this text box. For example, http://, https://, or ftp://.

    

5. Select one of the following settings:

   • Only redirect with www. — This setting only redirects visitors who enter the www. prefix before the domain name part of the URL.
   • Redirect with or without www. — This setting redirects all users, regardless of whether the visitor enters the www. prefix before the domain name part of the URL.
   • Do Not Redirect www. — This setting does not redirect users who enter the www. prefix before the the domain name part of the URL.
     Note:

     The interface disables the www. redirection setting if you select **All Public Domains.**.

6. Select the Wild Card Redirect setting if you wish to redirect all files within a directory to the same filename in the new directory. For example, if you enable the Wild Card Redirect setting and example1.com redirects to example.com, then a visitor who tries to access the http://example1.com/pic.jpg URL redirects to the http://example.com/pic.jpg URL.

7. Click Add.

8. To test the redirect, click the link under Directory in the Current Redirects table. If you properly configured the redirect, the system directs you to the original domain.

Redirects via third-party applications

When you add a redirect with cPanel interface, the system places redirect rules at the bottom of the .htaccess file. Some third-party applications will ignore your rule because those applications only read rules and configurations that their section of the .htaccess file contains.

The following example displays the configuration that you must add to the top of the .htaccess file to add a redirect for the Drupal content management system. In this example:

• drupal.user.example.com represents the URL to redirect.
• http://cpanel.net/ represents the URL to which to redirect.

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<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^drupal\.user\.example\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.drupal\.user\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^cptest$ "http\:\/\/cpanel\.net\/" [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

The Current Redirects table

The Current Redirects table lists the redirections that currently exist on your account. To search for a redirection, enter the search criteria in the Search text box and click Go.

The table lists the following information about redirects:

Examples

Permanent redirects

The following is a permanent redirect of an entire site from its original location to example.com:

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Redirect 301 / http://example.com/

The following is a permanent redirect of a page on example.com to a different page on example.com:

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Redirect 301 /original.html http://www.example.com/new.html

The following is a permanent redirect of an entire directory on example.com to a different directory on example.com:

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Redirect 301 /old-directory http://www.example.com/new-directory

Temporary redirects

The following is a temporary redirect of an entire site from its original location to example.com:

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Redirect 302 / http://example.com/

The following is a temporary redirect of a page on example.com to a different page on example.com:

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Redirect 302 /original.html http://www.example.com/new.html

The following is a temporary redirect of an entire directory on example.com to a different directory on example.com:

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Redirect 302 /old-directory http://www.example.com/new-directory