Blogger Magic - Redirecting A URL In Your Blog

In 2012, Blogger gave us a suite of useful utilities to control how the search engines see our blogs. This includes the ability to redirect one URL in our blog to another URL in our blog.

The "Custom Redirects" feature is easy to use - but like many Blogger features, not immediately so. Neither its possibilities, nor its limitations, are obvious to everybody.

Custom Redirects, which is part of the dashboard Search Preferences wizard, is not difficult to use.

1. Go to Settings - Search preferences - Custom Redirects, and click on Edit.
2. If you have existing redirects, click on "New redirect".
3. Enter the correct "From" and "To" values.
4. Select "Permanent".
5. Click on "Save".
6. Click on "Save changes".

The possibilities are almost endless, when you reference any valid URL in a given blog. Thanks to the syntax of the "From" and "To" values in the wizard, Custom Redirects will only redirect within the blog itself, and is thus useless to spammers and others who would like to misuse it.

Just take any two URLs within the blog, strip the base URL from each, and enter the results as the "From" and "To" values. Always start "From" and "To" with a "/" (no leading spaces, or non visible control characters!), signifying the root of the URL, follow the above procedure, and you're done.

Click here, for examples of what you can do. Then, use your imagination. Just remember though - the actual URL - and what your readers see in the address window - will not change.

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Removing The "/p/" From the URL

Ever since Blogger (finally) gave us the option to add static pages to our blogs, blog owners started asking

How do I make my pages URLs cleaner? The "/p/" in the URL is so messy looking.

Our typical response would be simple.

Sorry, you're stuck with the URL, as is, for a static page.

And, that was that.

Later, Blogger gave us the ability to redirect URLs within the blog - and that changed.

This is the URL of the topics index in this blog ("labels", to use the Blogger native term).

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/p/topics.html

Here are two alternate URLs, which also reference the topic index.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/topicindex

and

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/topic-index

Click on each link, and note where you go.

To make the alternate URLs work, all that I did was use "Custom Redirects", and add two entries.

From: /topicindex
To: /p/topics.html

and

From: /topic-index
To: /p/topics.html

Of course, the address displayed will be the address published - not the address entered into the browser. You can't change the address displayed - you can only simplify what has to be entered. And, to maintain proper spam mitigation policy, you can only redirect within the base URL of the blog.

Other than that, the possibilities are almost endless.

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Redirecting Any URL In Your Blog, To Another URL In Your Blog

Several months ago, Blogger Engineering gave us a new Blogger feature - the ability to redirect any URL in a blog, to any other URL in the blog. Like any feature, we found an immediate use for it - something much requested, for a good while.

Other people have found more uses for the redirection feature - and still others have found confusion. The syntax used in the redirection "From" and "To" values is not always obvious - and occasionally there is confusion about what can - and can't - be done with redirection.

This is the URL of this post.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

Using the redirection feature, I can redirect another URL in this blog, to this post - or conversely, I can redirect the URL of this post to another URL, in this blog.

Both the "From" and "To" values in "Custom Redirects" accept any static blog URL, less the base URL of that blog. You cannot specify the base URL - so all redirections will be within the blog itself. You also cannot use a dynamic URL (containing a "?") in a redirect.

The initial use for the redirection feature (at least, for me) was to replace the Home page of the blog, with another page or post - possibly, this post.

From: /
To: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

I could change the Home page of this blog, to start all new readers on the Topics Index page.

From: /
To: /p/topics.html

If I was to change the Title of this post, when re published, the URL would not change. If I wanted to change the URL of this post, I could redirect the desired URL, to the actual URL.

From: /2012/12/redirecting-any-urls-in-your-blog.html
To: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

If I want to allow this post to be accessed from a shorter URL, I can do that. If you click on the shorter URL (below), you will note that you still see the longer URL in the browser address window!

From: /redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html
To: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html

I recently created a shortcut to my Topics index, as "blogging.nitecruzr.net/topics".

From: /topics
To: /p/topics.html

To get the "From" and "To" values for any redirection, I simply take any two URLs in the same blog. Choose any two examples - one for "From", the other for "To".

• The Home page: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/
• A post: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html
• A static page: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/p/topics.html
• A label search: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/search/label/Redirecting
• A shortcut URL: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/topics

And drop the base URL: http://blogging.nitecruzr.net

Giving:

• The Home page: /
• A post: /2012/12/redirecting-any-url-in-your-blog-to.html
• A static page: /p/topics.html
• A label search: /search/label/Redirecting
• A shortcut URL: /topics

Having developed the proper "From" and "To" values, adding a "Custom Redirects" entry is simple enough.

Having setup a useful complement of Pages, and redirected the Home page, you may wish to remove the "Home" page tab. Just edit the Pages gadget, using the dashboard Layout wizard, or the on blog quick edit icon - not the dashboard Pages wizard - and de select the "Home" page.

A simple example, showing the result, may be seen in my demonstration blog, Home Page Redirected To Label Search.

From: /
To: /search/label/Home%20Page

You may also wish to remove the "Showing posts with label ..." notice, if you like a cleaner display. In my demonstration blog (mentioned above), I did not do this - to make my examples more obvious.

The possibilities here are endless. Just use common sense - and again, note the limits on redirection.

Click here, for instructions. Note again, that the actual address, displayed in the browser address window, will not change.

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Custom Redirects Let You Modify Pages Or Posts, And Publish Different URLs

We've been asking for the ability to have post URLs that differ from the post titles, for some time. Now, we have the Custom Permalinks feature, available in the New Blogger GUI Posts Editor, for new posts.

Some people would like to use custom permalinks for existing posts - and for pages. We can do that, too - but not by using Custom Permalinks. Custom Permalinks only works for new posts - and not for pages.

To change the permalink for existing pages and posts, we use the Custom Redirects option, in the "Settings" menu under "Search preferences".

This post was published as

blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/07/custom-redirects-let-you-modify.html

If I had used the "Permalink" option before publishing, I could have entered

new-blogger-gui-gives-us-custom

and published

blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/07/new-blogger-gui-gives-us-custom.html

If I want to change the URL of an existing page or post, I would use "Custom Redirects".

To address this post as

blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/07/new-blogger-gui-gives-us-custom.html

instead of

blogging.nitecruzr.net/2012/07/custom-redirects-let-you-modify.html

I would use "Custom Redirects", and

1. Enter "From:" as "/2012/07/custom-redirects-let-you-modify.html".
2. Enter "To:" as "/2012/07/new-blogger-gui-gives-us-custom.html".
3. Select "Permanent".
4. Click the "Save" link.
5. Hit the "Save changes" button.

Note that Custom Redirects, unlike Custom Permalinks, lets you change the published month and year ("/2012/07/"), and the extension (".html"). If you use Custom Redirects, do this carefully.

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Blogger Magic - A Static Home Page, Improved

For many years, Blogger blog owners have been asking for the ability to have a static Home page, on their blog.

We came up with a basic solution for that, a couple years ago. Last year, I packaged the procedure.

1. Set "Show" to "0 posts".
2. Add a static HTML / Text gadget.
3. Tweak the template for the new gadget, to display only on Home page.

This was an obvious solution (to some of us) - but it's painfully complex, and it involves editing the template HTML. It's an interesting techie solution - and that's about it.

Today, I realised that Blogger recently gave us this option, in a far simpler solution, last month - but not so many people noticed it.

The "Custom Redirects" feature is just what you need, to create a static home page.

1. Setup a Static Page. Use the dashboard Pages wizard, make a "New page", and select "Blank page".
2. Use the "Custom Redirects" dashboard wizard, and redirect from the Home page to the new Static page.
3. Work on the static home page, and make it attractive.

I setup a test blog - Nitecruzr Redirected Home Page Test, and added a Static page - "Static Home Page".

nitecruzr-test-redirected-homepage.blogspot.com/p/static-home-page.html

Having setup the static page, I redirected the Home page to the static page, using the "Search preferences" - "Custom Redirects" feature.

• From: /
• To: /p/static-home-page.html
• Permanent: Yes

Edit "Custom Redirects".

1. Enter "From:" as "/".
2. Enter "To:" as "/p/static-home-page.html".
3. Select "Permanent".
4. Click the "Save" link.
5. Hit the "Save changes" button.

And, that is it. You can see my test blog, as a basic demonstration.

Note that just as easily as redirecting the home page to any static page, you can redirect to any dynamic page (aka a "post"). So, you can pin a post to the main page, using Custom Redirects.

Once the "Home" page / tab is static, you can index the posts using any sidebar gadget - such as an Archive or Label index gadget. Or, you can index posts, as if they were pages.

• Publish your posts to a given label - I used "Posts".
• Add a label search entry, as a "Web address", to Pages.

Thus my Pages entry, "Posts".

Now, anybody can have a blog with a static home page, in 10 minutes (don't overlook steps #3 and #4, above - as I did, the first time). Click here, for more examples.

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(Update 2012/06/30): See The Video, for a live demonstration.

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