Introduction

Redirects are a very commonly utilized technique in web development. When configured, they will send the visitor of a particular URL or a domain name to a different destination, which is typically a different domain name or URL.

The most regular usage of URL redirection is performed when you want to either move content from one page/URL to a different one or when you want to completely change the domain name of your CMS. Typically, these redirects are implemented via snippets of code inserted into the configuration files of the webserver, such as Apache and Nginx, or the .htaccess file of your website.

In this tutorial, we will focus on the way to set up redirections directly from the TYPO3 administrative area, which is a lot easier, intuitive, and requires no server-side knowledge at all. Let’s begin.

Getting Started

To start setting up redirects in TYPO3, please log into your admin dashboard first. To do that, please add “/typo3” to your domain name - for example, “mycms.com/typo3” where “mycms.com” is your actual domain.

Accessing the mentioned URL will show a login page, where you have to enter your login credentials to access the backend. We also highly recommend checking our TYPO3 Backend Overview tutorial, which will teach you the basics.

Once you have logged inside your dashboard, please point your attention to the left, where you will see the Module Menu. 

Right under the “Site Management” section, you will see the “Redirects” option. When you click on it, the page will be refreshed, and you will see the “Redirects” section in the middle.

If there are currently no present redirects, you will see the message “No redirects found!”, located on the upper side of the page. Underneath, you will find the “Create new redirects” button. Please press it to begin your redirect configuration.

Configuring a Redirection

Clicking the “Create new redirects” button will refresh the page, and you will find yourself on the “Create new Redirect on root level” page. On this page, you will see two tabs - the “General” tab and the “Access” tab.

By default, you will see the “General” tab open, where you will be performing the most tweaks regarding the new redirection.

General tab

Let’s go over all of the available options under this tab.

• Source Domain - This section of the page will contain a text field, along with a drop-down menu. As you may probably know, one of TYPO3’s fundamental features is the ability to create robust multi-website networks. You may use this text field to type in a specific site within your network and set up a redirection for it. Alternatively, you can input the wildcard (*) sign to set the redirection for all sites or use the dropdown menu on the right side of the text field and select “Global redirect(any domain)”.
• Source Path - In this text field, please type in the exact URL you wish to redirect from. For instance, if the URL you want to redirect is located at “mycms.com/cool-content”, then all you need to write is “/cool-content”. If you want to redirect the index page, simply type in a forward slash (/).
• Respect GET parameters - Toggling this switch will respect GET parameters.
• Is regular expression? - This toggle switch will let the system know if you want to create your redirect using a regular expression. Regular expressions are special symbols that are interpreted differently and allow you to create powerful redirect patterns as long as they are written correctly.
• Target - This text field requires you to enter a target for the redirection. This could be an entirely different website, or it could be a page within the current site. For example, you may type in “http://hostarmada.com” as the redirection target or “mycms.com/very-cool-content”.
• Status code HTTP Header - This dropdown menu allows you to select the HTTP header status code for the redirect. The default option is a 307 temporary redirect status code. However, you can choose a 301 permanent one as well along with 302 found and 303 see other.
• Force SSL redirect - This toggle switch will force HTTPS redirection when toggled on.
• Keep GET parameters - This toggle switch will tell the system to keep the GET parameters defined within the URL if such exist.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we will be redirecting a page we created using the page tree in TYPO3 called “/hostarmada-tutorials” to our website “http://hostarmada.com”. This redirect will be permanent and will also force SSL redirection. 

Please refer to the screenshot above to see how the settings will look like.

Access tab

To access this tab, please click on the “Access” sign, located on the right side of the “General” tab.

The settings under this tab will allow you to set a timeframe in which this redirection will be active. This could be useful if you are running an ad campaign, and you want to direct all your traffic to a specific page during the time your campaign lasts and then bring everything back to normal. Setting this up is very easy - all you need to do is make sure that the “Enabled” toggle switch is highlighted in green.

Finally, you need to use the two fields under the “Start” and “Stop” labels to set a starting point and an endpoint for this redirection. Clicking on these fields will open up a window containing a calendar and a clock tool, letting you set the date/time in which you want this redirection to start and respectively end.

Once all the requested information is submitted, please click on the “Save” button located on the top left side of the page.

Now that your redirect is saved, you can visit the page and test it out. We are going to enter the URL “http://typo3.hostarmadatutorials.com/hostarmada-tutorials” in our browser.

This action immediately redirects us to our main site, “https://hostarmada.com”.

There you have it! The way you can easily and intuitively create URL redirections from the convenience of your admin dashboard in Typo3. If you are having issues handling this on your own or the redirects are not working as expected, you can ask our Technical Team for assistance. They are really resourceful and will definitely have a solution you may use. You can reach them 24/7 through the ticketing system in your Client Area.