Redirects and the 404 manager

Pro: This needs a Signocore SEO Pro license.

The Redirect Manager sends visitors and search engines from old addresses to new ones, and the 404 manager shows which missing addresses people actually hit, so you can fix the ones that matter.

Find the Redirect Manager

By default, the Redirect Manager has its own menu, Signocore Redirects, with Redirects, 404 Manager and Settings. Each page also has tabs for Redirect Manager, 404 errors and Settings. Only administrators can open them.

Two switches under Signocore SEO → General → Redirects control this:

Setting	Default	What it does
Enable	On	Turns the Redirect Manager on. When it is off, the menus disappear, no redirects run and no 404s are logged.
Separate Menu	On	When off, the pages move to Tools → Redirect Manager, Tools → 404 Manager and Settings → Signocore Redirects.

Create a redirect

Open Signocore Redirects → Redirects. The top row of the table is an empty redirect; Add Row adds another.
Choose the status code under HTTP.
Enter the old address under Source, as the path after your domain, for example /old-page.
Under Target, choose Custom URL and enter a full URL, or choose a content type and pick the post or page.
Leave Active on.
Click Save, the plus icon at the end of the row.

To change a redirect later, edit the row and click Update, the refresh icon. Delete, the trash icon, removes it. The list shows 50 redirects per page, and the search box above it finds a redirect by its source or by a Custom URL target.

When you are logged in as an administrator and open an address that shows "page not found", the admin bar has a Create redirect link. It opens the Redirect Manager with that address already filled in as the source of the top row.

HTTP	Use it when
301 Permanent	The page has moved for good. This is the right choice in most cases.
302 Temporary	The page is away for a while and will come back.
307 Temporary (keep method)	Like 302, but the browser repeats the same request method, which matters for forms.
410 Gone (no target)	The page is removed for good. Visitors get a 410 status, which tells search engines the page is gone on purpose. They see your theme's 410 template when it has one, and its 404 page otherwise.

A redirect matches one exact address. Letter case and a trailing slash do not matter, and wildcards or regular expressions are not supported.

The plugin stops you from saving a source that already has a redirect, a target that is the same as the source, or a redirect that would send visitors in a loop. When a redirect points to a post or page that is later deleted or unpublished, the redirect switches itself off the next time someone uses it. The Hits column counts how often each redirect was used.

Addresses with a query string

A source without a query string, such as /old-page, also matches /old-page?utm_source=newsletter and any other query string. The visitor's query string is passed on to the target, so campaign and ad tracking such as utm_source or gclid survives the redirect. This is skipped when the target has a query string of its own, and p and page_id are never passed on, because WordPress uses them to pick a post.

A source with a query string, such as /?page_id=42, only matches that exact query string, and the target is used as it is.

Safe Mode

Safe Mode is on by default. A redirect then only runs when its source address would otherwise show a "page not found" error, so a redirect can never hide a live page by accident.

To redirect a page that still exists, unpublish the page or turn off Safe Mode under Settings. With Safe Mode off, the SEO box of a page that has a redirect shows "We found a redirect for this URL."

Moved and renamed content

With Keep old addresses working on, which is the default, old addresses keep working when content moves. When a visitor opens an address that no longer exists, Signocore SEO checks whether content used to live there, creates a 301 redirect to its new address and adds the redirect to your list, where you can edit or switch it off like any other.

This covers:

Posts, products and similar content whose slug you changed.
Pages whose slug or parent page you changed while they were published.
Categories, tags, product categories and other public terms whose address changed.
Everything below a moved page or term. When /services/ becomes /what-we-do/, /services/design/ goes to /what-we-do/design/, and a product whose address includes a renamed product category goes to its new address.

A redirect you switched off for an old address stays off. When a page or term moves, redirects you created that point to its old address as a Custom URL are updated to the new address, so visitors never pass through two redirects in a row. A redirect or 404 entry for the new address is removed, because it would hide the content or report it as missing.

The switch is Moved content on the Settings tab. Pages and terms only get their old addresses remembered while it is on, so a page or term moved while it was off gets no redirect later.

Removed content

When you move a published post, page or product to the trash, delete one, or delete a category, tag or other public term, the next admin screen you open shows a notice: "Removed content left an address that leads nowhere". The notice waits until you leave the block editor, and it lists up to 10 addresses at a time.

Each address has two buttons:

Create redirect opens the Redirect Manager with the address filled in as the source, so you can pick a new target.
Serve 410 Gone creates a 410 for the address at once and confirms with "This address now answers 410 Gone." It replaces a 404 entry or redirect for the same address.

If you restore a post from the trash, the 410 you created for it through the notice is removed again, unless you have changed it to a redirect in the meantime. The notice appears for administrators, for content they removed themselves, and only while the Redirect Manager is enabled.

The 404 manager

Signocore Redirects → 404 Manager lists the addresses visitors requested that do not exist, with the most hit first. Hover the question mark next to an address to see up to 10 recent referring pages.

The 404 manager with missing addresses, hit counts and suggested targets

By default, only visits that came from a link are logged. Turn on Log all 404s to log direct visits too. The log stores the path without the query string, so /old-page?ref=mail and /old-page count as one entry. The list shows 50 entries per page, and the search box above it finds an address.

Turn a 404 into a redirect

Choose a status code under Save as (HTTP).
Choose a target under Target, or click a page next to Suggested:. Suggestions are up to three published pages with a similar slug: the best match is shown, and a +1 or +2 button opens the others. Clicking a suggestion fills it in as a Custom URL target.
Click Save, the plus icon. The address leaves the 404 list and becomes a redirect.

Click the Ignore icon to hide an address you do not want to redirect.

Keep the log tidy

Keep 404 entries for: entries that have not been hit for this many days are removed once a day. The default is 90. Use 0 to keep them until the log is full.
The log holds at most 5,000 entries. When it is full, the entries that were hit longest ago make room for new ones.
Clear 404 entries deletes every entry in the 404 list at once. Ignored addresses are kept, so they stay hidden. This cannot be undone.

Redirect settings

Open the Settings tab.

Setting	Default	What it does
Moved content	On	Keep old addresses working: sends visitors from the old address of moved or renamed content to the new one. See Moved and renamed content.
Attachments	On	Redirect attachments to parent post: while attachment pages are off, visitors of an attachment address go to the post the file belongs to instead of to the file itself. A file that belongs to no published post still goes to the file.
URL case	On	Redirects addresses with capital letters to the lowercase address. Addresses with a dot, such as file names, keep their case.
Safe Mode	On	Only runs redirects for addresses that would otherwise show "page not found".
Domain redirection	Off	Redirects requests on any other domain that points to your site to the same path on your site address.
Ignore file extensions	A list of common file types	Skips 404s for these extensions, separated by commas.
Ignore common strings	A list of common probe paths	Skips 404s whose address contains one of these strings.
Log all 404s	Off	Also logs 404s without a referring page.
Keep 404 entries for	90 days	See above.

The default ignore lists filter out the requests bots send to look for weak spots, such as .env, .sql, wp-config.php and phpmyadmin. They also skip .js, .css, .xml and .txt files and everything under wp-content, so a missing image in your uploads folder is not logged unless you edit the lists.

Attachment pages

Whether uploaded files have their own attachment pages is decided by Attachment Pages under Signocore SEO → Visibility, see Sitemaps, indexing and robots.txt. While attachment pages are on, they are shown and Attachments does nothing. While they are off, WordPress sends visitors to the file itself, and Attachments sends them to the post the file belongs to instead.

When you update from a version before 6.0 with Attachments on, the update switches attachment pages off once, so visitors keep landing on the parent post as before.

Import and export

To bring in redirects from Yoast SEO Premium, Rank Math, All in One SEO or the Redirection plugin, use Signocore SEO → Import instead, see Switch from another SEO plugin.

The Import/Export card on the Settings tab moves redirects in and out as a CSV file separated by semicolons, in the format HTTP;Source;Target:

HTTP;Source;Target
301;/old-page;https://example.com/new-page/
302;/summer-sale;https://example.com/sale/
410;/discontinued-product;

Import Redirects checks the whole file first. If a single row is invalid, nothing is imported. The header row is optional, a 410 row needs no target, and a source that already exists is updated.
Export Redirects downloads your redirects. Redirects to a post or page are exported with its current URL. With no redirects yet, you get a sample row that shows the format.
Export 404 Entries downloads the 404 log.