Redirects

The HTTP protocol supports two types of redirects: temporary (302) or permanent (301). The UltraCart Catalog system supports both types of redirects.

Permanent Redirects ("Send 301" checkbox is checked)

Permanent redirects are most commonly used to maintain a search engine foot print during a migration into the catalog. For example if a site had 200 URLS consisting of hand created pages that have been in the search engine for years it would be a bad idea to simply switch over to the catalog system without redirecting these URLs. Instead you would make a list of all the old URLs and configure redirects to all the new pages on the sites. This would make sure that the search engine spiders are happy and at the same time prevent dead links for anyone that bookmarked an old page.

Temporary Redirects ("Send 301" checkbox is not checked)

Temporary redirects are useful to send traffic to a different URL when they land on a specific URL. For example if we are running a special July 4th promotion and created a unique landing page for the two week promotion we may want to redirect the home page of the site to the special landing page so we can quickly turn off the sale later.

Configuring Redirects

Configuring a redirect of either type is very simple. From the catalog menu choose URI Mapping as shown below.

This screen allows you to configure the mapping from one URI to another. It's important to point out the different between a URL and a URI. A URI is the part of the URL after the host section. For example if we have the URL:

http://www.ultracart.com/contactus.html

Then the URI would be:

/contactus.html

The redirection system of UltraCart works on URIs because everything is within the one catalog host.

"Send 301"  (Checkbox field) - Selecting this checkbox determines the redirect should be considered permanent (301) instead of temporary (the default). This will cause the web-browser to notify the customer to update their bookmark to the new address.

Redirecting the Home Page

If you want to redirect the home page then you will need to a special promotional page then you'll need to enter two different URI mappings as shown below:

This is because the home page of the site can be accessed with or without a file name being specified.  The example below will send a temporary redirect from the home page traffic to the july4th.html page.  When we are finished with the promotion we can remove these two redirects and our regular home page will be back in action.

Redirecting to Other Websites

Redirecting to other websites is not a commonly used feature.  Even though redirects are typically used to redirect traffic within the site, you can enter a complete URL in the "To URI" column and UltraCart will send the browser to the external site.  Some merchants that do review sites like to create points of redirection for all the traffic exiting their site.  So for example if they are reviewing HGH problems they might have a URI on their website /recommendHgh.html which they have a temporary redirect setup to their current favorite HGH site that they have reviewed.  If they want to change where that traffic goes they could modify the redirect instead of changing links throughout their entire site.

When redirecting from a secure.ultracart.com hosted catalog, make sure that the URI does not include the /catalog/MerchantID/, as the redirect will not take place if this informaiton is present.

TODO: When the documentation on Catalog URI SSL is written it needs to be linked from here.