From time to time it happens that pages are moved within the TYPO3 page tree or the page title changes. If you use the RealURL extension for your website, this means that the URL path will also change according to the new structure and the page will no longer be accessible under the old path. However, the old URL is still indexed in search engines or linked to other websites in most cases. So that visitors and search engine crawlers can continue to reach the site via the old path, it is necessary to manually set up a 301 redirection.

Previous solutions

For this a corresponding entry must be created in the . htaccess file in the web directory of the server. Often editors do not have the necessary rights to make these changes themselves. So the work falls back to an administrator who has to maintain and maintain the list of redirects regularly.

Alternatively, redirects can be created individually directly in the administration of the RealURL extension. However, every time an old path is requested, PHP and MySQL are called. Especially for larger portals with many visitors this leads to an increased server load.

The key is the ID

The goal of our solution was to develop a TYPO3 extension that simplifies and automates the administration of forwarding as much as possible. The basis for this is the use of the TYPO3 page ID in the URL path. Since the ID is unique, the corresponding page can be assigned via it. The page ID is appended as the last segment in the URL path. From the URL

http://www.example.com/page1/subpage3

is thereby

http://www.example.com/page1/subpage3-14512

If the page title of the TYPO3 page changes or is moved, the path changes, but not the last segment of the URL – the ID remains the same. If the URL is now called with the old path, our extension checks the ID, determines the current correct path and returns a corresponding 301 forwarding to the browser. At the same time, the old (invalid) and the new path are stored in a data record so that these calls can later be generated collectively as redirect rules from the backend on the server.

All functions at a glance

• Automatic forwarding of moved pages
• Automatic forwarding of renamed pages
• Activate/deactivate for specific page types and pages
• Optimized for Google Article URLs
• Compatible with proxy services such as Varnish
• Compatible with TYPO3 6.2 – 7.6

Why automated forwarding is worthwhile

By using this extension, we were able to successfully minimize the number of crawling errors at our customers and increase the search engine rating. From an economic point of view, the administrative and technical effort for the creation and maintenance of redirect rules was considerably reduced. Our extension is an ideal supplement if you already operate a larger portal with TYPO3, which is regularly edited.