Help:Redirects

A redirect is a bit of code that forwards the user to a new page.

Creating redirects is helpful when there is more than one possible title for a page, or many different ways a user might search for a topic. Creating redirects for potential titles helps your users find the existing page, and also helps to prevent the accidental creation of duplicate articles.

Redirects are also automatically created when a page is moved, allowing links and users who used the old title to automatically be brought to the new title.

How to create a redirect

 * To make a page redirect to another, first open the page for editing and go to the source editor.
 * If there is any content on the page, delete it so the page is clear.
 * Enter the following onto the page (where Page title is the name of the page you want this one to redirect to):




 * Save the page.

Tips

 * Both lower case  or upper case   will work.
 * The  line must be the first line of the page, and lines below it will be ignored.
 * Redirects do not work with external links.
 * Make sure the redirect code is not wrapped in any other tags, like  tags.

An example
Instead of creating duplicate articles for Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker on Wookieepedia, you might want links to  and   to point to the same page.

If you want that page title to be "Anakin Skywalker", then "Darth Vader" should be a redirect. The Darth Vader page would contain this:



How do I change a redirect?
It is possible to change the Darth Vader redirect by editing it. First, try visiting the Darth Vader page, which redirects to the Anakin Skywalker page. Then, below the title of the page, you will see the text:


 * (Redirected from Darth Vader)

Click this "Darth Vader" link to go back to the redirect page at Darth Vader. You can then click "edit" to alter the Darth Vader page as usual (making the redirect link point somewhere else, or replacing it with a new article) like any other page.

What is a "double redirect"?
A double redirect is a redirect page that points to another redirect page. For example, suppose that "Vader" points to "Darth Vader" which points to "Anakin Skywalker". Then visits to the "Vader" page will be forwarded only once and stop at the "Darth Vader" redirect.

To fix this, click the (Redirected from...) link on the "Darth Vader" redirect page, to go back to the "Vader" redirect. Edit Vader's redirect to point to "Anakin Skywalker".

You can find a list of double redirects by visiting the Special:DoubleRedirects page on your community.

What is a "broken redirect"?
A broken redirect is a redirect page that points to a page that does not exist.

To fix this, click the "Edit" button and redirect the page to one that does exist. (Previewing the edit can help you check if the redirect destination exists.)

You can find a list of broken redirects by visiting the Special:BrokenRedirects page on your community.

Can I put anything else on a redirect page?
All text below the first line will be ignored, except for categories. Although this is rarely needed, there are a few circumstances where you might want to categorize redirects.

A common reason to categorize a redirect is the cache limitations of Special:ListRedirects. Some communities may have more than 1000 redirects, so the special page would list only the first thousand and stop listing any more after the thousandth redirect in the system.

This can be undesirable for maintenance and organizational purposes (e.g. a title that is very unlikely to be searched may not be found normally), so most communities generally categorize redirects so they can be listed, as a category list is not subject to the cache limitation of a special page.

Further help and feedback
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