A redirect is a bit of code that forwards the user's browser 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.
How do I create a redirect?
To make a page redirect to another, simply type this on the page:
- #redirect [[Page title]]
where Page title is the name of the page you want this one to redirect to.
You can also use:
- #redirect [[Page title#Section]]
This will redirect the user to a section header. Use this sparingly, because if someone who is unaware of the redirect changes the title of a section, the redirect will no longer go to that section but will take you to the top of the page instead.
Using either lower case #redirect or upper case #REDIRECT will work. The #redirect line must be the first line of the page. All other lines below it will be ignored.
Example
Instead of creating duplicate articles for Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker on the Star Wars Wikia, you might want links [[Darth Vader]] and [[Anakin Skywalker]] 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:
#redirect [[Anakin Skywalker]]
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:
-
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 point somewhere else, or replacing it with a new article) like any other wiki page.
What is a "soft redirect"?
A soft redirect is a very short page that essentially tells the user to look at another to obtain the information they were seeking.
The technique is most often used when redirecting users across wikis, especially where cross-wiki redirects are disabled. On such a wiki, the text of a hard redirect will be displayed, but will not actually take the user to the other wiki.
See Help:Soft redirect for more information.
What is a "double redirect"?
A double redirect is a redirect page that points to another redirect page. For example, suppose that [[Darth Vader]] points to [[Anakin skywalker]] (lowercase s) which points to [[Anakin Skywalker]] (uppercase S). Then visits to the Darth Vader page be forwarded only once and stop at the [[Anakin skywalker]] redirect.
To fix this, click the (Redirected from...) link on the [[Anakin skywalker]] redirect page, to go back to the [[Darth Vader]] redirect. Edit Darth Vader's redirect to point to [[Anakin Skywalker]].
Can I put anything else on a redirect page?
All text below the first line will be ignored, except for category links. Although this is rarely needed, there are a few circumstances where you might want to categorize redirects.
Where can I find more help?
See MetaWikiPedia:Help:Redirect for more detail on this feature.
