FAQ#
Aren’t 301 redirects better?#
Client-side redirects with meta refresh are okay for search engines, even the most ancient browsers, and users too.
sphinx-reredirects extension was created for tech writers who don’t want or can’t manage redirects with server-side 301 redirects. Generally, SEO consultants recommend server-side redirects created with .htaccess and similar files. However, many documentation is hosted as on static website hosting which doesn’t support server-side redirects.
I know better how to write HTML redirect file#
By default, created HTML redirect files contains
<html><head><noscript><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=${to_uri}" /></noscript><script>var target = "${to_uri}";if (window.location.hash) {window.location.replace(target + window.location.hash);} else {window.location.replace(target);}</script></head></html>
A little bit of JavaScript is used to handle hash part of the URI (the #foo in https://example.com/docs#foo).
If you want to change this behavior, you can create your own HTML template. Just set redirect_html_template option in your conf.py to point to your template file. The template file should be located in the source directory (the directory containing conf.py). For example:
redirect_html_template_file = "redirect.html.template"
Actual target URI requested in configuration is available under ${to_uri} placeholder.
Why name “reredirects”?#
Because the name “redirects” is already taken by another extension. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fulfil our requirements (the most notable it doesn’t support wildcards and placeholders). These were reasons why we decided to bring a new extension.