Setting Up 301 Redirects with WP Engine
With the way that WP Engine uses NGINX, creating 301 redirects isn’t as easy as pasting a little code into an .htaccess file.
Instead, we’ve got to hop into the WP Engine Dashboard, go to Installs > the install you want to work with > Redirects, and fill out a few forms. You’ll see something like this:
Those are all my many redirects from restructuring over the previous many years of this website’s existence.
You can click the New Redirect Rule to start a new one (or click on the name of one to edit it once you’ve got one or two). You’ll see this:
Redirect name is just a name for your own reference here in the dashboard.
Domain allows you to choose if you want to use all domains associated with this install, or only specific ones. I haven’t been able to think of a reason to use only a specific domain yet, but maybe you’re more creative than me. 🙂
Source is where you’d typically put the first part of a 301 Redirect (if you’re familiar with how to do that). It should be either something just like /some/web/path, usually you want it without the trailing slash and never with your domain name. If you’ve got Regex skills, you can use those here too. If you don’t, click the link and learn something new.
Destination is going to be the full URL you want to redirect to (the last part of a 301 Redirect). Something like http://mywebsite.com/my-new-page/
That’s it! Click Save and you’re on your way!
Up Next: How to Setup an A Record in GoDaddy when you Host with WP Engine Hosting