301 Redirect to specific blog posts

jcoehoorn · ‎04-21-2017

We're moving some content into weebly from an older platform. This includes several hundred blog posts. I can see the 404's for the old posts in Google Analytics. Right now, the 301 option only lets me redirect to the basic blog page; I can't easily redirect to individual posts. The only way I've seen so far to work around this is to create an actual page for each old post and put a manual redirect to the actual blog post into the header in the SEO settings. Then I can do the 301 redirect to that page.

That's awkward and slow, not 100% reliable, and it shouldn't be necessary. We need to be able to redirect to a specific post.

I also noticed the separate request from someone moving their blog content out of Weebly to redirect to external domains. It might be worth combining those into an "Advanced" redirect option, where you have to put in a full URL for the destination, rather than picking a page. That would get the job done for both of us.

Queso · ‎04-21-2017

Hello! Just to be sure, are you looking for an easier way to redirect in bulk?

Rishi1 · ‎06-11-2017

No, he wants to be able to redirect his individual blog posts to the corresponding blog posts that have their own unique URL and not just have Weebly redirect the new URL to the main "blog" page.

Hope that makes sense.

Rishi1 · ‎06-11-2017

Thank you for this post. I am looking to do something similar. I need to change out my old URL (very long URL) to a new, shorter URL (permalink) that I will use instead for the same blog post. Weebly does not have a way to simply redirect individual blog posts to a new URL. As you note, you can only redirect to a main page which is not helpful at all to bloggers.

It would be nice to see Weebly come up with a solution for this.

Adam7 · ‎06-12-2017

I can definitely see that being useful, @Rishi. You might want to post that to our Vote on Features board if you'd like us to add that as an option.

Nativetraveller · ‎01-13-2019

Has this become available?

Adam7 · ‎01-14-2019

Thanks for posting this to the Vote on Features board, @Nativetraveller. In case anyone else is looking for that here is the post:

https://community.weebly.com/t5/Vote-on-Features/301-reddiret-to-specific-blog-post-or-url/idi-p/124...

Inspired83569 · ‎11-19-2019

How has this not become a feature???

This is one of the most basic requirements that shouldn't need to be voted on to be implemented.

Two years on from the original post and people are still having this issue.

If I were to change my blog post URLs now (which is something I need to do), how would I be able to prevent 404s if I can't simply set up a redirect from the old post URL to the new one?

It baffles me that Weebly receives suggestions for basic features that should already be in place as standard, and two years on, still haven't implemented them...

Why should your users continue to use your platform if you can't provide some of the most basic SEO and page features and if you don't listen to customer feedback and suggestions?

Bernadette3 · ‎11-19-2019

Thanks for the detailed feedback, @Inspired83569 I totally understand your frustration and wish I had better answer for you. We receive 100s of requests a week and our product teams have pushed a lot of updates based on requests that have been submitted. Unfortunately, it's not possible for them to implement each and every request, but they do prioritize based on the overall impact a feature would have for the bulk of the customer base. I do wish they could put more time and effort into the blogging tools, though.

Blockbeta · ‎08-20-2021

To be honest, Weebly focuses a lot of their energy on what Square actually wants, which is ecommerce. Everything else is junk to them. It's pretty shortsighted, considering that if there were better tools for driving traffic and conversion, Square would ultimately meet its aims. Obviously, you as a moderator have no control over this. All you can provide is platitudes.

Spurgeon · ‎02-22-2022

I 100% need this right now! I'm losing top Google search rankings because I can't redirect blog post URLs I've changed. This would be very valuable to Square's e-commerce goal since most bloggers make sales from the traffic they send to their site via blog posts. All of my redirects are sitting in a spreadsheet just waiting to be redirected...