A Centralized 301 Redirect Plugin.

You meant 301, right? Personally, I just use .htaccess file. In terms of raw–performance, I haven’t found more efficient way to do 301 for broken links. Especially if you are making a new website and expect lot of new 404 errors. You can get your 404 from Google Search Console, then use Excel or readily available google sheet .htaccess to prepare the redir arguments. There might be even better tools or ways to handle this, so if you find one, please let us know. So far, this worked for me. This process doesn’t require lot of time, therefore it doesn’t justify using a plugin (for me at least). I think you should always avoid using plugins if you can achieve something on server level, as it is simply more efficient. If you want to count 404 click-troughs, and you are using Google Analytics, just add UTM parameters to your destination links.

So as you can see, there is no intermediate need for incorporating fancy dashboard functionality into this plugin. Lack of central dashboard is not crippling the plugin in significant way… However, I agree it might be a nice addition in a form of TSFEM extension. Personally, I think the developer power is better used elsewhere, for example in planned SEO Settings Importer/exporter that would allow users to try/switch TSF easily… or leave.

On the top of that, there is plenty of nice plugins that do exactly what you want. You shouldn’t be afraid to use more plugins, as good extensions don’t bloat your WordPress. But I might be wrong and as it is with everything regarding TSF, if there is demand for a feature and enough logic to it, it usually gets implemented.

What are your thoughts on all this @benfranklin?

Hi @benfranklin,

Currently, what you’ve described in the first paragraph is the correct way to do this with TSF.
Don’t forget to also set noindex (for the exclusion from sitemap) and “Exclude from search” parameters for that blank page.

I do have a “conditional” system in mind where users set “if X is Y then do Z”.
e.g. “If request is /something/ then do redirect to /else/“.

But we still have a long way to go. You might be better off using a dedicated plugin for managing redirects in the meantime; depending on the applied scale.

Yes, 301. And thanks for the response. Response in bullets:

-CURRENT METHOD: The basic way 301 is handled on the current plugin seems sub-optimal. It seems better to have a central list of redirects you create and then you don’t have all these empty posts.

-PRIORITY:Not sure it’s a priority relative to other stuff on the docket but it seems like a nice part of what an SEO plugin does but this is based on being accustomed to letting the Yoast plugin handle it with a centralized list

-HTACCESS: If you manage a multisite system with hundreds of sites you don’t want to have to add these to a centralized .htaccess. Also, in both a multisite setup and single site setup working with .htaccess is a dangerou thing and could bring down the whole site … using a GUI for this limits chance of doing something dumb.

-FINDINGS: For now, I think I am going to have to use this guy which 800k other people are using, apparently: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/redirection/
— I just tested the top 5 redirection plugins and, indeed, it seems this one which has been downloaded the most is the best — no stupid upselling ads like some of the others, the link is buried as a sub menu and it also logs 404 errors right there for you so you needn’t visit webmaster tools to view.

Hi @benfranklin,

You’re right. Manually managing .htaccess on a multisite is a bad idea.

The redirection plugin you linked looks great and might be exactly what you need ??
With that, I believe I can mark this topic as resolved.

I’m also working hard on implementing many features; as Scott Adams famously wrote:

Normal people don’t understand this concept; they believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.

We’ll get there, eventually ??

Hey @benfranklin, you brought up a solid point there with multisite. To be pefectly honest I wasn’t expecting a power–user–case, rather simple 1:1 site migration. I wasn’t trying to shut you up with one–off solution, I still believe my proposal is viable in lot of cases. But not in yours. .htaccess is powerful, therefore dangerous. In your case, Redirection is a good plugin to use. I used it myself, but after auditing the plugins I found myself not using any of the advanced features. If you find out redirection plugin is still not good enough or there is no other good alternative, come back here and we can reopen this discussion ?? I hope you understand it is not possible to implement the 301 dashboard in foreseeable future.

As a purely personal sidenote, I wouldn’t allow too many people and things go near your .htaccess. ??