Redirecting can be a hairy thing if you don't know how to do it. Redirect Helper Lite is here to make that part of your life easier now. With a few clicks and strokes of the keyboard you can setup simple URL redirects for your ExpressionEngine site. You can also use Redirect Helper Lite to setup and track campaigns that utilize special URLs on your site.
Key Features
- Easily create redirects for internal URLs
- Choose between 2 commonly needed HTTP statuses for SEO purposes
- Automatically fill in your destination URL with the built-in generator (see docs)
- Setup redirects to external websites
- Disable a redirect by setting the status to Closed
- Built-in debugging tag to help track down any issues that may come from redirects
Example Usage
The most obvious and common usage of this module is to redirect an old link to an updated link. A perfect example is one of my old projects pages that I originally setup when my site was powered by WordPress. The URL at the time was http://erikreagan.com/projects/2008/05/catch-all-php-form-processor but after I migrated my site to ExpressionEngine the URL was http://erikreagan.com/projects/catch-all-php-form-processor/. I setup a simple redirect with this module to take care of the redirection. I use the HTTP Status “301 Moved Permanently” so bots would get the memo as well and indexes would be updated appropriately.
Another use for this module would be for campaigns where you want to track conversion. Every time a redirect is used a cookie is saved. This cookie can be retrieved for a number of purposes. A good example would be sending someone to your website to sign up to win free movie tickets. You may have a radio or tv ad that says (verbally), “visit our website at your tickets dot come slash free tickets to enter to win”. You could setup a different redirect for users who find the free ticket giveaway through the website directly. Another redirect from twitter, and another from Facebook, etc. Then in your form you could get the redirect cookie that is saved and track which campaign brought the most conversions.
Redirect Helper Pro
This module is the “lite” version of a commercial version that will be available this year. The Pro version of Redirect Helper will have many more features aimed toward campaign tracking. It will also make it very easy for clients to add and track these redirects on their own. They won’t need any knowledge of how redirection works on a technical level and you, the developer, will be able to automate pieces and hide pieces from them to avoid confusion. Because of this module having both a free and commercial version the source code will not be available under my GitHub account.
Comments
Hi Alberto
I use this module with Structure on a number of sites and have not found any issues. What exactly is happening? Can you tell me the steps you’ve taken along with the results you are receiving? Let’s continue the conversation in the EE forums on the thread for this module here: http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/136052/
Thanks!
I just tried to upgrade to version 1.1.1 from 1.0, and lost complete access to both the front and back end of my site. It seems that a crucial table was missing. The hosting company was able to restore my previous version, and I lost only one day’s worth of data. I’m guessing that the problem is that I am using EE version 1.6.8 - I certainly won’t try that again!
Sorry to hear about your troubles Geoff. I haven’t heard of this happening before. I will try to duplicate the error and see what I find. It is always a good practice to backup your database before performing an installation or upgrade. That said, off hand I don’t know what would have caused this in the module. I’ll let you know what I find. Thanks!
I had the same issue as Geoff when trying to install version 1.1.2 on EE 1.6.8. The error said something about a missing table (unfortunately I didn’t take a screen of the error). I was forced to revert back to a previous db backup to get my site running again.
Geoff and/or Manoj
Did either of you enable the extension without the module being installed? (Working on tracking down the error)
I received an error using version 1.1.2 - trying to get a property of a non-object.
on line 228, you’re using the $SESS global, but it wasn’t registered in the sessions_start method. I added it to the global list on line 143, but it didn’t work. So I changed line 228 to be $session instead of $SESS ($session is the argument passed into the sessions_start function)
That seems to work, but I wanted to run the solution by you. Am I doing something wrong, or just a bug that slipped into the release?
So easy, thanks.
Hi there.
I’m looking for something that will help me track clicks *away* from my EE site to other sites - I get the impression this module (like the Referrer Module native to EE) is more for tracking and managing links *into* your EE site.
The site I’m looking to develop is to work as a central community hub for various member organisations - each member has their own page on the EE site that will include links to their Twitter page, Flikr page and/or own websites etc. One of the goals of the site is to promote the members themselves, one way being to direct people to their own sites, Twitter, Facebook group etc.
I was wanting a away to manage / track these conversions from the EE site to the external sites… is this missing the purpose of Redirect Helper?
Hi Andy
The redirection is possible with Redirect Helper Lite but the tracking is not. It will be part of the Pro version and will support tracking from the Control Panel.
Even then I’m not sure that it would do what you need. It sounds like you would want each member to be able to track their individual stats. Is that right?
Yeh… I mean we could use the Google Analytics Overlay feature to see how many people are clicking on certain links, but having some way to keep it inside EE would be preferable.
I guess similarly using bit.ly URL tracking may also work but it’s still not ideal.
Its just a simple way to see whether users are using the site for the intended purpose - it’s not monetized or anything complicated, more just an indicator that people are using the site for one of its goals.
This is sweet, exactly what I need, any chance of porting to EE 2? I would be more than happy to pay for the pro version.
You cannot believe how long ive been googling for something like this. Scrolled through 6 pages of Google results and couldnt find anything. Quick search on bing. There you are!.... Gotta start using that more often Thank you.
Your Words of Wisdom
Hi, very nice module, I will probably buy the commercial version if my tests will have good results…
I’m trying to use it with the Structure module (http://www.buildwithstructure.com) but it seems not working. Do you have any suggestion?
Thanks
Alberto
Alberto on Feb 17th at 3:43 am