Redirecting non-existent pages and URLs

Admins can configure custom redirects for non-existent pages. For more information, see our docs for Error Pages and Redirects. 

External Link Pages

Pages can be set to an "External Link" type, essentially turning the page URL into a redirect to a specific link.

To set a page as an External Link, click on the Page dropdown at the top of a page, then select External Link.

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External Link redirects will only work if the page is set to Public.

Updated page slug redirects

When a page slug has been updated, we automatically redirect visitors from the old page slug to the updated slug. This behind-the-scenes redirect only applies to the most recent slug change.

For example, if a page with the original slug dog-0 has its slug updated to dog-1, we automatically redirect visitors from the dog-0 URL to the updated dog-1 URL. However, if the page is renamed again to dog-2, we'll redirect visitors from dog-1 to dog-2, but not from dog-0; the original dog-0 URL will 404 when visited.

Custom domain redirects

If a project has been configured with a Custom Domain, we'll redirect visitors from the project's original readme.io subdomain to the custom domain.

For example, if a project at cats.readme.io has been configured with the custom domain docs.cats.org, any visitors who attempt to load cats.readme.io will be automatically redirected to the docs.cats.org.

Versioned link redirects

When a visiting a project URL containing a version path, if that version path is the project's Main Version, we redirect the visitor to the non-versioned URL.

For example, when clicking on a link to fish.readme.io/v10.0/docs/start, and v10.0 is the project's Main Version, the visitor is redirected to fish.readme.io/docs/start.

Versioned links for non-main versions are not redirected.