301 redirect missing?

@tacoverdo so if the feature is moved and we have updated, how can we check to see what pages have been redirected?
I think i,d prefer to find them and implement all in same manner i.e htaccess rather than some locked in my database and new in htaccess.

@mrppp They are still visible and editable on the posts/pages that have them set prior to the upgrade.

Thanks for your detailed response, @tacoverdo

I understand the rationale: difficulty in managing, and site load times.

It is hugely helpful to know that all the redirects still work.

If I understand you correctly, for now the plugin still performs the query on pageload to check for the redirect, is that right? Is there a plan to deprecate this in the future for the sake of speeding up site load times?

I hadn’t thought about trying to keep track of the redirects, as I had no need to do so. The database was doing that for me.

Perhaps it would be helpful to understand a little bit better how the premium version helps manage redirects. Does it accomplish this without sacrificing load times? I’ve seen the video that you guys published about it, so the UI makes sense to me. My question is really directed to what’s under the hood… is it substantially different or does it perform the same query at page load that you referred to in your response?

I’m not worried about you moving the whole SEO plugin to premium — it would destroy your lead generation and the business model would fall apart. What I am worried about is getting surprised with a change and not knowing how my sites are going to be impacted.

Perhaps it would help to include just a bit more detail in the changelog? Currently, the entry reads:

Removed the possibility to redirect a post in the advanced tab of the Yoast SEO metabox.

While its wording was, I’m sure, quite intentional, it did leave us questioning whether the existing redirects would continue to work or not.

Perhaps something like this would help:

Removed the possibility to add new post/page redirects in the advanced tab of the Yoast SEO metabox. (Existing 301 redirects still function.)

One final thought: it would also be helpful to know where the redirects get stored in the database. That way I could at least find them since they’re hidden in the UI.

Thanks again!

@david Johnson – I wrote a blog post that shows you how to find the redirects. Find WordPress SEO Redirects.

@diywebmastery Thanks!!

Yes… thank you very much, @diywebmastery — very helpful indeed!

Hoping Yoast can chime in on this, but I’m fearful I know the answer… I am currently building a new website for a community college. We are running multisite, however each individual “site” within multisite is still part of the greater site. All sites are styled the same, it was just an easy way to allow for different menus throughout the site.

https://cms001.pubweb.niagaracollege.ca/ – If you click “Students” for example, that is a different “site”.

We have many many “sites” technically, but it’s all part of 1 larger site – as a visitor you wouldn’t know the difference.

So, will I have to buy a license for every single “site” in my multisite? If so, we are pretty much done for – there’s no way we can afford the price. Are we out of luck? The 301 redirect feature is important to us.

@niagaracollege read diywebmastery post above to get list of 301 redirects.

Once you have them you can add to your htaccess file (assuming you have one)

But @tacoverdo says

All your redirects will still work. Your website will not be impacted in any way, we only stopped you from adding more redirects this way

So in future redirect in another way if you don’t want a premium version.

We want the premium version but the pricing is inaccessible for us.

I’ll be finding another plugin for 301 redirects in the future. I understand that they can be added via htaccess – that doesn’t work for us for a number of reasons.

Cheers,
Niagara College

Maybe email them with pre sales question
[email protected]

@niagaracollege you might take a look at the Redirection plugin. It’s what I’ve used for many years now to handle redirects. I had really only recently (in the last year or so) begun to utilize the 301 redirect function in the Yoast SEO plugin. (Didn’t know it was there before then!)

@niagaracollege If you network activate the premium plugin on your multisite installation, you just need a single license (currently for sale, so $69 instead of $89).
If you have any further pre-sale questions, please email to [email protected].

@david G. Johnson, the premium redirection module indeed does use a different system for redirecting, thus not needing the extra query on each page load.
So yes, we might deprecate the current system in a future release, but since that’s going to be a change that breaks backwards compatibility, we’re really careful doing so. For now, we just try to motivate people not to use it anymore.

@tacoverdo Thank-you for the clarification!

Thanks, @tacoverdo. I appreciate the responses.

So the bottom line is: We need to upgrade to Premium

OR

We need to locate all of our existing redirects using the method @diywebmastery wrote about and get them handled another way so that when Yoast deprecates the existing redirect functionality, the redirects will not be broken.

OR

We need to never update the Yoast SEO plugin again (not practical).

Now if I could only remember which sites I’ve used this feature on…

Hi @tacoverdo,

Although it looks like this is a done deal, I just wanted to add my disappointment about this decision as well.

I’ve used this feature on tons of sites, and to just remove it has resulted in a really poor user experience for me.

I have some Yoast Premium plugins (so I am a paying customer, not someone who’s never paid a cent and complains about items in a free version), but this decision just feels like a way of forcing me to upgrade to Premium on more sites.

I can understand some of your technical points in your earlier response about why you decided to do this, but honestly, they come across as lame justifications. If there’s a performance issue associated with using the feature, then by all means mention this and recommend we don’t use the feature. But to just remove it… you’ve caused additional work for us, especially if I want to remove an existing one. Really disappointing.

My request would be that you please reconsider this decision and restore the functionality.

Thanks.