Redirecting an old URL to a new URL in Joomla

Sometimes some of your valuable links may lead to the 404 page. Usually, this happens when the alias of the category or article changes or when the category or article is removed.

To keep the traffic on the site, you can use a 301 redirect solution. This is easy to do in Joomla through the "Redirect" component.

Find broken links in Joomla

You can view broken links directly in the Joomla backend.

To have broken links collected, make sure:

1. Search engine friendly URLs are enabled in System > Global configuration.
2. System - Redirect plugin is enabled in Extensions > Plugins.

Now you can navigate to System -> Redirects.

If there are broken links collected by Joomla, you should see them in the list:

Your website may be scanned by different robots, so you may possibly come across links like /wp-admin/ etc. These have nothing to do with your Joomla website, so you can remove them.

Redirect page to new URL

In the overview, click on the expired URL and you will get to the detail page where you can enter the new URL.

You may include the domain name in the URLs, but these may also be relative URLs such as /blog/why-I-chose-siteground-as-joomla-hosting.

Make sure the status is enabled and then you can save and close this page.

Short urls on social media:

You can also take the above steps to create your own short urls that you can easily share on social media.
For example, https://www.joomill.com/redirects links to this page (https://www.joomill.nl/kennisbank/joomla-configuratie/doorverwijzen-naar-nieuwe-url-in-joomla)