Page Names, Page URLs, and URL Redirects, all work together to ensure your site visitors can find and get to the proper pages. They are a very important part of a website. Page Names do not have to be unique, but should be short and memorable. Page URLs must be unique, and are the physical link people use to get to a page. Redirects allow you to control/fix how traffic flows, and correct issue with old or broken links, route people to new pages, or even to external pages.
Edit/Rename a Page
A page name is what is being displayed by the default Navigation Widget and thus showing in your site's main navigation. It is common to wish to rename a page like if there was a typo, or you just want to use a better page name.
To rename a page:
- Open the Pages Panel from the left
- Access the Page Settings by clicking the 3-Dots next to the page name
- Choose Rename
- Enter in the new page name
Renaming a page will NOT affect the page URL that was already created for and in use by the page. This is intentional so that any published or saved links to the page already in circulation do not break. Rediker will often use a Breadcrumb Widget along with a Page Title Widget, together these widgets will also display the page name on the page, thus editing the page name will update these widgets as well.
Change the Page URL
As noted above the page URL (also known as a slug or path) refers to the part in a link after your domain (domain/page-name) and is initially set at the moment the page is created. Changing the page name as detailed above, will NOT change the page URL. There can be many reasons why a page URL needs to be updated or changed, for example, the page name originally used contained an error or typo, and you also want the update to be reflected/corrected in the page URL. Updating or changing a URL is especially helpful when you are building a new website and want old links and search results to continue to properly route to pages on your website.
Changing a page URL can break links to existing pages and or harm current SEO search results, proceed with caution.
To change a page URL:
- Open the Pages Panel from the left
- Access the Page Settings by clicking the 3-Dots next to the page name
- Choose Page URL
- Enter in the new page URL
Upon editing the page URL the editor may ask you if you wish to also add a "redirect" (pointing the old page URL to the new one). This is often recommended to ensure people still using the OLD link do not experience a broken link.
The page URL should be lowercase with no special characters. Use a hyphen/dash "-" for a space. The Page URL MUST be unique and will not let you set a page URL to an already in use URL.
Set up a URL Redirect
A URL redirect is where if a person tries to visit a page URL they are redirected to a new or different page URL. For example, you now need or want traffic going "domain/test-page" to be routed to "domain/new-test-page". This will ensure site visitors land on the correct page in your site, and prevent loss of existing search ranking. This can also include directing traffic to an External URL. For example, you have a separate site for your school library and want the URL "domain/library" to go to some other domain and page. Redirects are especially handy, when you are building a new website and want old links and search results to continue to properly route to pages on your website.
To create/edit/delete a URL Redirect:
- Open the SEO & Settings Panel from the left
- Then choose URL Redirect
- Now you can choose to either Add a New Redirect or Edit/Delete an existing ones
If the old page's URL still exists, the redirect will not successfully direct users to the new page. This is due to existing pages taking precedence over redirects.