In this lesson, you’ll learn:
- When to set 301 redirects
- How to redirect a page
- How to redirect a folder
- How to use escape characters
- How to redirect an entire domain
When to set 301 redirects
Important: While Webflow currently doesn’t have a hard limit in place for total redirects, we recommend 1,000 maximum as best practice. Each redirect rule is uploaded to a site’s manifest.json file, which provides site information to visitors’ browsers. As the manifest file grows, there’s more data for browsers to download. For the best SEO and site performance, use wildcard redirects where possible, which minimizes the total number of redirect rules.
301 redirects are useful for permanently routing traffic from an old path to a new URL — for example, when you:
- Reorganize your URL structure (e.g.,
webflow.com/mysitetowebflow.com) - Replace or redesign your site and have new URLs (e.g.,
webflow.com/oldhomepagetowebflow.com) - Move to a completely new domain (e.g.,
webflowiscool.comtowebflow.com) - Secure alternative domains in case of site visitor typos (e.g.,
webflow.net,webflow.org,webflow.iotowebflow.com)
When an old URL is replaced with a new URL, your old URL may still be visible in search results, referenced in a blog post or a forum post, bookmarked, or printed on business cards or other materials. Anyone who visits the old URL will be led to a 404 page — but if you set up a 301 redirect, site visitors visiting the old URL will be redirected to the specified new URL.
Google will eventually index your new site structure and old URLs will get updated. However, 301 redirects are a best practice, especially if you want to maintain ranking power from the old URL.
There are other types of redirects — such as 302 redirects, which indicate a temporary relocation — but 301 redirects are best used if you need to permanently route incoming traffic to a new URL.
Note: 301 redirects are relative to your root domain and won’t apply to localized slugs or subdirectories. For example, if you’d like both /old-url and /es/old-url to redirect to /new-url, you’d need to set these up as two separate redirect rules.
How to redirect a page
You can permanently redirect old pages or entire folders of pages to new locations in your Webflow site. To set a 301 redirect:
- Go to Site settings > Publishing > 301 redirects
- Enter the old URL in the Old path field (e.g.,
/old-url) - Enter the new URL in the Redirect to path field (e.g.,
/entirely/new-url/structure) - Click Add redirect path
- Publish your site
Now, you can test the redirect by entering the old URL in a new browser tab. It should redirect to the new URL. Learn more about writing redirect URLs.
Important: To redirect an existing static page on your Webflow site to a new URL, you’ll need to delete or save the page as a draft, or change its slug before setting the redirect. To redirect an existing Collection item page on your Webflow site to a new URL, you’ll need to archive, delete, or unpublish the item, save it as a draft, or change its slug before setting the redirect.
How to redirect a folder
To redirect the contents of a folder — whether you’re redirecting to a single page or multiple pages — you’ll need to use capture groups.
To get started with a basic folder redirect to multiple pages:
- Go to Site settings > Publishing tab > 301 redirects
- Enter a URL with a capture group
(.*)in the old URL structure in the Old path field (e.g.,/oldfolder/(.*)) - Enter a URL with a target path
%1in the new URL structure in the Redirect to path field (e.g.,/entirely/new-url/structure/%1)
You can add multiple capture groups to create more complex redirect rules. For example, /blogs/(.*)/(.*) can be redirected to /articles/%1/%2.
Wildcard redirect examples
Let’s say you want to redirect multiple pages in a folder to a single URL — for example, to point domain.com/collections/women, domain.com/collections/men, and domain.com/collections/children all to domain.com/collections. Assuming domain.com is the domain connected to your Webflow site, you’d write this redirect as follows:
- Old path:
/collections/(.*) - Redirect to page:
/collections
Or, let’s say you want to redirect all pages with a URL structure like /domain.com?category=food&post=pie to /blog/food/pie — i.e., redirect multiple pages to multiple URLs.
You might have categories like “music,” “travel,” and “food,” and posts like “beyonce,” “london,” and “pie.” These are your variables. In the URL above, “food” and “pie” are the variables. To make these variable changes, you’ll need to call out these variables with capture groups, which are written as (.*). For example, you’d need to write this redirect as follows:
- Old path:
/%?category%=(.*)%&post%=(.*) - Redirect to page:
/blog/%1/%2
In the example above, %1 refers to the first capture group, and %2 refers to the second. With this wildcard redirect in place:
/domain.com?category=music&post=beyonceredirects to/blog/music/beyonce/domain.com?category=travel&post=londonredirects to/blog/travel/london/domain.com?category=food&post=pieredirects to/blog/food/pie
How to use escape characters
You’ll need to escape the following special characters in all Old path URLs and URLs with wildcards by using the % symbol before the character:
%-&*()=_+?
For example, /old-folder/(.*) needs to be written as /old%-folder/(.*) in order to function as a redirect.
Let’s say you want to redirect mysite.com?category=food to mysite.com/blog/food. You’ll need to write your redirect as follows:
- Old path:
%?category%=food - Redirect to path:
blog/food
The % signs before the ? and = are required to make the redirect work properly.
Note: You only need to escape characters in the old path — you don’t have to escape characters in the new redirect path.
How to redirect an entire domain
To redirect one domain to another:
- Connect both old and new domains to your site
- Set the new domain as the default
- Publish your site