If you change the permalink of an article, anyone who's bookmarked the old link or has been given that old permalink in an email or marketing materials will receive a 404 error.
Instead of that unpleasant experience, use the article's Old Links to 301 redirect retired permalinks and articles to a new location. Refer to Old Links use cases for more detailed explanations of when you might want to use this feature.
You have two options for using old links:
- Turn on a setting so that when you change a permalink and save the article or category, we'll prompt you to automatically add the previous permalink as an old link. Refer to Automatically redirect when you update an article's URL for more information on this feature.
- Add old links manually: Refer to the instructions on this page.
Manually add an Old Link
To manually add an Old Link:
- Open the article or category in the editor.
- Select the Old Links hyperlink at the top of the editor:
The Redirect Links modal opens.
Sample Old Links link - Enter the Old Permalinks that should redirect to this new article. These should be relative permalinks, so they should only include the portion that comes after your knowledge base homepage. For example, if I'm setting up a redirect for
https://support/knowledgeowl.com/help/remove-home-page-title, I'd enterremove-home-page-titleas my Old Permalink. - Once you've finished entering your old permalinks, select Update Redirects button to save those redirects.
- Save your article or category in the editor.
Troubleshooting: Only valid URL slugs are allowed warning
The Redirect Links modal may display this warning:
Only valid URL slugs are allowed. Any invalid characters will be stripped upon save.
This warning means you entered a URL that contains unsupported permalink characters, which usually means you tried to enter a full URL instead of just the article permalink.
To resolve the warning, review the Old Permalinks you've entered and be sure they're using the article's permalink only (like remove-home-page-title) instead of the full URL (like https://support/knowledgeowl.com/help/remove-home-page-title).
Use cases
Old links let you redirect permalinks for old/outdated links to a current article. There are two primary use cases for old links:
- When you've written a new article that "replaces" an existing article. Keep reading for more on this use case.
- When you've updated an article's permalink due to title or content changes. Use the Automatically redirect when you update an article's URL setting to handle this use case!
Replace an existing article
Linus, our trusty owl, has written an article called Giving a hoot about knowledge, and the permalink was something like:
https://support.knowledgeowl.com/help/giving-a-hoot-about-knowledgeAfter that article was published, his marketing team used that permalink in a public blog post on owls and wisdom.
Now, let's suppose that Linus has since written a new and better version of this content called Docs or it didn't happen:
https://support.knowledgeowl.com/help/docs-or-it-didnt-happenBut Linus isn't sure all the places out in the wide world that referenced that giving a hoot article. And what if it was so brilliant that other people also referenced it, linked to it, or bookmarked it?
Old links to the rescue! Instead of trying to track down every instance of the original permalink for Giving a hoot about knowledge, Linus can set Giving a hoot about knowledge to a deleted status and enter the giving-a-hoot url as an old link for Docs or it didn't happen. When people try to go to the giving-a-hoot URL, we'll auto-redirect them to docs-or-it-didnt-happen instead.
For this type of Old Links use case, the old article you wan to redirect must be in some type of Draft, Archived, or Deleted publishing status. Refer to Publishing status to learn more about the available publishing statuses.