Adding new rules through code

Looking forward to this one.

There are various ways described here, with the REST API probably being the most suitable.

https://redirection.me/developer/

Thanks, @johnny5. Just to confirm; that doesn’t work with static files, right? I mean, with files which are in uploads folder for example?

Redirecting a static file depends on the server setup. Some servers are configured to bypass PHP when serving a static file, even if that files doesn’t exist.

More details here: https://redirection.me/support/problems/url-not-redirecting/

Okay, I guess I will check this with our users ?? However, in my experience, static files are never processed through WordPress. It would impact performances a lot and would skip all the specific caching related to them. The only way would be to actually handle those redirections in the .htaccess.

Thinking about that, a while ago, I created this plugin: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/media-usage/. It forces the images to go through WordPress. That way, I was keeping stats about their usage and the goal was to find out the useless ones. Unfortunately, the impact on performances was too big.

Sure, but what I meant is that some sites are (poorly) configured to try and serve a static file directly even if it doesn’t exist. This results in a server 404 page, rather than checking if the file exists and if not, allowing the 404 to be served through WordPress.

Indeed, that is definitely the best way to go, but in fact, how to set this up? I only see this possible through some config at the Apache or Nginx level, or maybe there is a rule we could do in the .htaccess? Sorry, maybe it’s part of your FAQ already, but I thought I’d ask ??

For Apache you can use RewriteCond with the -f flag. There’s a similar rule for Nginx:

https://serverfault.com/questions/122315/nginx-rewrite-url-only-if-file-exists

Indeed, that’s perfect, thanks ?? That will be helpful for those guys wanting to renamed files.