Custom and built-in redirects on Read the Docs

Over time, a documentation project may want to rename and move contents around. Redirects allow changes in a documentation project to happen without bad user experiences.

If you do not manage URL structures, users will eventually encounter 404 File Not Found errors. While this may be acceptable in some cases, the bad user experience of a 404 page is usually best to avoid.

Built-in redirects ⬇️: Allows for simple and long-term sharing of external references to your documentation.
User-defined redirects ⬇️: Makes it easier to move contents around

Limitations

By default, redirects only apply on pages that don’t exist. Forced redirects allow you to apply redirects on existing pages, but incur a small performance penalty, so aren’t enabled by default. You can ask for them to be enabled via support.
Only Page redirects and Exact redirects can redirect to URLs outside Read the Docs, just include the protocol in To URL, e.g https://example.com.

Built-in redirects

This section explains the redirects that are automatically active for all projects and how they are useful. Built-in redirects are especially useful for creating and sharing incoming links, which is discussed indepth in Best practices for linking to your documentation.

Page redirects at `/page/`

You can link to a specific page and have it redirect to your default version, allowing you to create links on external sources that are always up to date. This is done with the /page/ URL prefix.

For instance, you can reach the page you are reading now by going to https://docs.readthedocs.io/page/guides/best-practice/links.html.

Another way to handle this is the latest version. You can set your latest version to a specific version and just always link to latest. You can reach this page by going to https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guides/best-practice/links.html.

Root URL redirect at `/`

A link to the root of your documentation (<slug>.readthedocs.io/) will redirect to the default version, as set in your project settings.

This works for both readthedocs.io (Read the Docs Community), readthedocs-hosted.com (Read the Docs for Business), and custom domains.

For example:

docs.readthedocs.io -> docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

Warning

You cannot use the root redirect to reference specific pages. / only redirects to the default version, whereas /some/page.html will not redirect to /en/latest/some/page.html. Instead, use Page redirects at /page/.

You can choose which is the default version for Read the Docs to display. This usually corresponds to the most recent official release from your project.

Root language redirect at `/<lang>/`

A link to the root language of your documentation (<slug>.readthedocs.io/en/) will redirect to the default version of that language.

This redirect is currently only active on Read the Docs Community (<slug>.readthedocs.io and custom domains).

Root language redirects on Read the Docs for Business can be enabled by contacting support.

For example, accessing the English language of the project will redirect you to the its version (stable):

https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/ -> https://docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

Shortlink with `https://<slug>.rtfd.io`

Links to rtfd.io are treated the same way as readthedocs.io. They are intended to be easy and short for people to type.

You can reach these docs at https://docs.rtfd.io.

User-defined redirects

Prefix redirects

The most useful and requested feature of redirects was when migrating to Read the Docs from an old host. You would have your docs served at a previous URL, but that URL would break once you moved them. Read the Docs includes a language and version slug in your documentation, but not all documentation is hosted this way.

Say that you previously had your docs hosted at https://docs.example.com/dev/, you move docs.example.com to point at Read the Docs. So users will have a bookmark saved to a page at https://docs.example.com/dev/install.html.

You can now set a Prefix Redirect that will redirect all 404’s with a prefix to a new place. The example configuration would be:

Type: Prefix Redirect
From URL: /dev/

Your users query would now redirect in the following manner:

docs.example.com/dev/install.html ->
docs.example.com/en/latest/install.html

Where en and latest are the default language and version values for your project.

Note

If you were hosting your docs without a prefix, you can create a / Prefix Redirect, which will prepend /$lang/$version/ to all incoming URLs.

Page redirects

A more specific case is when you move a page around in your docs. The old page will start 404’ing, and your users will be confused. Page Redirects let you redirect a specific page.

Say you move the example.html page into a subdirectory of examples: examples/intro.html. You would set the following configuration:

Type: Page Redirect
From URL: /example.html
To URL: /examples/intro.html

Page Redirects apply to all versions of your documentation. Because of this, the / at the start of the From URL doesn’t include the /$lang/$version prefix (e.g. /en/latest), but just the version-specific part of the URL. If you want to set redirects only for some languages or some versions, you should use Exact redirects with the fully-specified path.

Exact redirects

Exact Redirects are for redirecting a single URL, taking into account the full URL (including language and version).

You can also redirect a subset of URLs by including the $rest keyword at the end of the From URL.

Exact redirects examples

Redirecting a single URL

Say you’re moving docs.example.com to Read the Docs and want to redirect traffic from an old page at https://docs.example.com/dev/install.html to a new URL of https://docs.example.com/en/latest/installing-your-site.html.

The example configuration would be:

Type: Exact Redirect
From URL: /dev/install.html
To URL:   /en/latest/installing-your-site.html

Your users query would now redirect in the following manner:

docs.example.com/dev/install.html ->
docs.example.com/en/latest/installing-your-site.html

Note that you should insert the desired language for “en” and version for “latest” to achieve the desired redirect.

Redirecting a whole sub-path to a different one

Exact Redirects could be also useful to redirect a whole sub-path to a different one by using a special $rest keyword in the “From URL”. Let’s say that you want to redirect your readers of your version 2.0 of your documentation under /en/2.0/ because it’s deprecated, to the newest 3.0 version of it at /en/3.0/.

This example would be:

Type: Exact Redirect
From URL: /en/2.0/$rest
To URL: /en/3.0/

The readers of your documentation will now be redirected as:

docs.example.com/en/2.0/dev/install.html ->
docs.example.com/en/3.0/dev/install.html

Similarly, if you maintain several branches of your documentation (e.g. 3.0 and latest) and decide to move pages in latest but not the older branches, you can use Exact Redirects to do so.

Migrating your documentation to another domain

You can use an exact redirect to migrate your documentation to another domain, for example:

Type: Exact Redirect
From URL: /$rest
To URL: https://newdocs.example.com/
Force Redirect: True

Then all pages will redirect to the new domain, for example https://docs.example.com/en/latest/install.html will redirect to https://newdocs.example.com/en/latest/install.html.

Sphinx redirects

We also support redirects for changing the type of documentation Sphinx is building. If you switch between HTMLDir and HTML, your URLs will change. A page at /en/latest/install.html will be served at /en/latest/install/, or vice versa. The built in redirects for this will handle redirecting users appropriately.