Redirects

A redirect points one address at another. Someone types mowp.org/donate-november, the site sends them straight to the donation page, and they never see a "page not found". Nothing is copied or moved: it's a rule with two halves, the address people use and the address they end up at.

Publishers and admins create these in the CMS, and they take effect as soon as you save. The reasons to make one:

• A page moved or was renamed. The old address keeps working instead of breaking every bookmark, email link and search result pointing at it.
• A page was retired. The address lands on the nearest page that still helps rather than a "page not found".
• A campaign needs a short printed address. Short enough for a mailer, a TV segment or a card at a checkout counter, forwarding to the giving form.
• A vanity link points off the site. mowp.org/facebook sends someone to the Facebook page.
• An address went out with a typo. The misprint is already in circulation, so a redirect makes it work.

Where redirects live

Two things can forward an address, and a request is answered by the first that matches.

• Cloudflare sits in front of the site. Domain-level forwarding lives here and never reaches the CMS.
• The Redirects list in the CMS handles everything else.

The rules carrying the legacy site's addresses across at launch and the ones you add yourself are the same kind of thing, in the same list, so a migration rule can be edited like one of your own. See Redirects for what came across at launch.

Permissions

Publishers and admins. Editors don't see Redirects in the CMS sidebar and can't create one: a redirect is an operational setting rather than a piece of content, and it can send a visitor somewhere else entirely.

Whoever orders the mailer with the short address on it needs a Publisher account to make their own.

Creating a redirect

Two filled-in examples

A campaign address on the site. The ?c= carries the campaign name through to the giving form and your analytics.

From Path      /donate-november
To Path        /donate?c=november
Status Code    Temporary (307)
Enabled        checked
Notes          Nov 2026 direct mail, 12k households. Repoint to /donate when the appeal closes.

A vanity link off the site.

From Path      /facebook
To Path        https://www.facebook.com/mealsonwheelspeople
Status Code    Temporary (307)
Enabled        checked
Notes          Vanity link for print and email signatures. Points at the Facebook page.

Permanent or temporary

Permanent tells search engines to transfer the old address's ranking to the new one, and browsers remember it and stop asking the site. That last part makes it hard to take back: repointing a wrong permanent redirect in the CMS won't move anyone whose browser already learned the old answer, including yours.

Temporary does neither. Search engines leave the original address alone and browsers check every time.

When you're not sure, pick Temporary. A temporary redirect that should have been permanent costs you some search ranking on an old address. A permanent one that should have been temporary is stuck in people's browsers.

Choosing the address

• Short. /gala beats /2026-annual-gala-tickets.
• Lowercase, always. Addresses are case-sensitive, so /Facebook and /facebook are two different addresses and only the one you created works.
• Hyphens for spaces. /stride-for-seniors, never /stride for seniors or /StrideForSeniors.
• Guessable. The address someone would try without being told.
• One segment where you can. /gala is easier to print and say aloud than /events/gala.
• Not already in use. Check the Redirects list, and check no page already loads there.

Off-site destinations

Same form, more riding on the destination.

• Use the full address, starting https://. Without it the destination is treated as a path on the site and lands on a "page not found".
• Paste, don't type. Social and ticketing addresses are easy to get subtly wrong from memory.
• The destination can change without you. An Eventbrite listing comes down, a social account gets renamed, and your printed address still forwards — straight to somebody else's error page.
• Visitors leave with no warning. Keep these for destinations recognizably the organization's own.
• Nothing loads at the short address, so analytics never see the visit. Add tracking parameters to the destination itself if you need to count it.
• Review once a year. Keep the list short and check each destination still loads.

Timing

Immediately. Saving clears the site's cached copy of the redirect list, and the next visitor to that address gets the new rule. Editing or deleting works the same way.

Testing

Open a private window — it sidesteps your CMS login and any permanent redirect your browser learned from an earlier test. Type the address exactly as it will be printed, full domain and same capitalization, then check you land on the destination with its address in the bar. For an off-site link, confirm it isn't a login prompt or a "content unavailable" screen.

Limits

• Override a page that already exists. The site looks for a page first, then a campaign page under /donate/, and only then the redirects list. Retiring a page means deleting it: unpublishing isn't enough, because an unpublished page still holds its address and returns a "page not found" before the redirect is reached.
• Match part of an address. The rule matches one exact address, not the pages beneath it, so /our-story forwarding to /about does nothing for /our-story/our-people. There are no wildcards.
• Match anything after a ?. Query parameters are ignored when matching, and the destination gets exactly what's in To Path. Anything that needs to key off a parameter, or pass one through, has to be built. Send those to the developer.

Redirect or page

A redirect has no content of its own, only a destination. The test is what the printed address has to do: if it only needs to reach the giving form, make a redirect; if it has to persuade someone before they get there, make a campaign page — a short address of its own, left out of the menu, which is what /giftofmeals and /costofcare already are.

For the redirects carrying the legacy site's URLs across at launch, including the campaign addresses already in circulation, see Redirects.