Redirects

When a page’s address changes, Promptless WP remembers the old address and sends visitors who use it to the page’s current address with a permanent (301) redirect. Links from other sites, bookmarks and search results keep working. You can also map addresses from a previous site onto the pages that replaced them.

WordPress already does this for posts and other non-hierarchical content: rename a post and its old address redirects. It does not do it for pages, because a page’s address includes its parent pages. Promptless WP adds the same behaviour for pages.

When to use it

You rename a page or move it under a different parent. Nothing to do: the redirect is recorded for you.
You merge several pages into one and delete the others. Delete with a redirect to the page that replaces them.
You are replacing an older site, and its addresses, such as /departments/permits.aspx, need to reach the new pages.
After a launch, you want to see which old addresses visitors are still using.

Redirects are managed automatically and through the Promptless connector — ask your AI assistant. There is no redirects screen in wp-admin. To set up the connector, see Connector Overview.

What happens automatically

A page is renamed or moved. When a published page’s slug or parent changes, its old address is recorded. The old addresses of all its published child pages are recorded too, since their addresses changed with it. This applies whether the change is made in WordPress or through the assistant.
A page is moved back. If a page returns to an address it used to have, that address stops being treated as old.
A page is merged into another. When the assistant deletes a page with a redirect to the page that replaces it, the deleted page’s address, and every old address it already answered for, now lead to the surviving page. The surviving page must be published, or the deletion is refused.
A page is trashed. Its old addresses stay with it, but stop redirecting while it is in the trash. Restoring it restores them. Deleting it permanently removes them.

How to map addresses from a previous site

Make a list of old addresses and the new page each one should reach. Full old URLs are fine; only the path is kept, and query strings are ignored.
Give the list to your assistant and ask it to add the redirects. It can add up to 500 in one step.
Ask it to list the redirects to confirm them. Any address it refused — because the page does not exist, you cannot edit it, or the address already reaches that page — is reported.

An address belongs to one page. If you point an address at a second page, the newest mapping replaces the old one.

How to find addresses nothing answers

Promptless WP keeps a log of addresses visitors requested that returned a “page not found” error: up to 200, with how many times each was hit, when it was first and last seen, and the last site that linked to it.

In the weeks after a launch, ask your assistant for the missing addresses.
For each one that was yours, add a redirect to the page that replaced it.
Ignore the rest, or ask the assistant to clear the log.

Site validation also lists the most-requested missing addresses, and any redirect whose page is no longer published. See Site Validation.

The log leaves out WordPress’s own addresses, files such as images and stylesheets, the home page, and very long addresses. When it is full, the least-requested entry is dropped first, so a burst of one-off requests from a scanner does not push out an address real visitors keep using.

Why redirects never chain

A redirect records which page an old address belongs to, not a destination address. The destination is looked up when the visitor arrives, from the page’s address at that moment. Rename a page twice and both old addresses go straight to the current one, in a single step. If the page stops being public, the redirect stops and site validation reports it.

Limits and common problems

No redirects to other websites, and no pattern rules. For those, and for full 404 reporting, use a dedicated redirect plugin such as Redirection. It works alongside Promptless WP, which only acts on addresses that would otherwise be a “page not found”.
The home page is not recorded. The page set as the front page is always served at the site’s root address, whatever its slug.
A page moved under a draft parent is not recorded. It was not reachable at its new address.
An old address still shows “page not found”. The page it belongs to is a draft, private or in the trash. Publish it, or point the address at the page that replaced it.
An address that already works is never redirected. A redirect only applies when nothing else answers the address.

Available since Promptless WP 1.8.1.