Help:Redirects

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A redirect is a bit of code that forwards the user to a new page.

Creating redirects is helpful when there is more than one possible title for a page, or many different ways a user might search for a topic. Creating redirects for potential titles helps your users find the existing page, and also helps to prevent the accidental creation of duplicate articles.

Redirects are also automatically created when a page is moved, allowing links and users who used the old title to automatically be brought to the new title.

How to create a redirect

  • To make a page redirect to another, first open the page for editing.
  • If there is any content on the page, delete it so the page is clear.
  • Enter the following onto the page (where Page title is the name of the page you want this one to redirect to):
#redirect [[Page title]]
  • Save the page.

Tips

  • Both lower case #redirect or upper case #REDIRECT will work.
  • The #redirect line must be the first line of the page, and lines below it will be ignored.
  • Redirects do not work with external links.
  • Make sure the redirect code is not wrapped in any other tags, like 'nowiki' tags.

An example

Instead of creating duplicate articles for {{#NewWindowLink:http://wikizilla.org/index.php?title=King_Ghidorah%7CKing Ghidorah}} and {{#NewWindowLink:http://wikizilla.org/index.php?title=Grand_King_Ghidorah%7CGrand King Ghidorah}}, you might want links to [[King Ghidorah]] and [[Grand King Ghidorah]] to point to the same page. The Grand King Ghidorah page would contain this:

#redirect [[King Ghidorah]]

How do I change a redirect?

It is possible to change the Grand King Ghidorah redirect by editing it. First, try visiting the {{#NewWindowLink:http://wikizilla.org/index.php?title=Grand King Ghidorah|Grand King Ghidorah}} page, which redirects to the King Ghidorah page. Then, below the title of the page, you will see the text:

Click this "Grand King Ghidorah" link to go back to the redirect page at Grand King Ghidorah. You can then click "edit" to alter the Grand King Ghidorah page as usual (making the redirect link point somewhere else, or replacing it with a new article) like any other page.

What is a "double redirect"?

A double redirect is a redirect page that points to another redirect page. For example, suppose that "Cretaceous King Ghidorah" points to "Grand King Ghidorah" which points to "King Ghidorah". Then visits to the "Cretaceous King Ghidorah" page will be forwarded only once and stop at the "Grand King Ghidorah" redirect, which is bad.

To fix this, click the (Redirected from...) link on the "Grand King Ghidorah" redirect page, to go back to the "Cretaceous King Ghidorah" redirect. Edit Cretaceous King Ghidorah's redirect to point to "King Ghidorah".

You can find a list of double redirects by visiting the Special:DoubleRedirects page.

Can I put anything else on a redirect page?

All text below the first line will be ignored, except for categories. Although this is rarely needed, there are a few circumstances where you might want to categorize redirects.

A common reason to categorize a redirect is the cache limitations of Special:ListRedirects. Some communities may have more than 1000 redirects, so the special page would list only the first thousand and stop listing any more after the thousandth redirect in the system.

This can be undesirable for maintenance and organizational purposes (e.g. a title that is very unlikely to be searched may not be found normally), so most communities generally categorize redirects so they can be listed, as a category list is not subject to the cache limitation of a special page.

See also