Setting up 301 redirects

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1

Hi guys!

So I recently redesigned a website and moved hosting from GoDaddy to Webflow. While the domain is the same, all URLs have changed completely. I am trying to setup 301 Redirects, but the WF tutorial doesn’t seem enough for beginners. I have two questions:

  1. The old site had asset uploads with a URL generated: (domain-name.org/sites/default/file-name.pdf). Now that I have replaced the old site, naturally these do not work. I cannot figure out how to set this redirect. Currently, these assets are on my computer and PDFs and JPGs (I downloaded the entire site backup of the old site before replacing). Is there a way to set this up?

  2. The old site had a CMS with URL structure www.domain-name.org/research/name-cms-item. (eg.) On the new site, it has been changed to www.domain-name.org/conflicts/the-name-of-the-cms-item (eg.) On the old site, the URLs did not include prepositions, articles, etc. Is there a way to set up a 301 redirect in this case?

Thank you!
Aashna

2

@Aashna_Gupta - Welcome to the forums.

q1)

Assets need to be uploaded to assets in webflow. Then you would have to grab the full URL of the asset you want to redirect to and use it as the target for the redirect of the old PDF(old path to file).

Q2 - I would leave the path names as the were on the old site, then you could use a simple wild card for research/* to conflicts/*. The alternative is to set individual redirects. I don’t think you will be able to do a regex to handle all the path variables that were truncated by the old CMS.

3

Hey! Appreciate the help.
Do the redirects to the assets have to be done manually? The database has over 700 CMS items, and over a 1000 assets. Can they be put on an external server or is there a way to not do this process manually?

4

Manual. You can only use the hosting settings interface. I would created a spreadsheet to use as part of the manual process.

5

Oh that sucks. This will take a lifetime, especially since the WF uploads interface leaves a lot to be desired.

6

I know this was last October, but for anyone else who might run into this problem of having a ton of redirects. I’d say you have to look at where your site currently ranks on Google. IF you’re not on the first or second page and you have a ton of redirects, it’s wipe my sie completely from Google and then have it recrawled.

IF you do rank on Google 1st or 2nd page … yeah it’s probably worth putting in the effort to add redirects. With all that keep in mind I believe there is a limit to how many you can have both in Google and Webflow.