{redirect} Macro

This page is part of the documentation for a product called Confluence – nothing to do with mySpace.com redirection, sorry!

The {redirect} macro will automatically redirect the browser to an alternate web page either within your own site or on an external site...

There are several circumstances under which you may require this macro:

You have moved content to another space or site but people are still visiting the old location - the macro will automatically take them to the new location
You want to provide a static URL to some information that changes location occasionally - hand out the fixed URL and use the macro to automatically redirect the user to the current destination URL

The {redirect} macro has the following parameters:

{redirect:location|delay=time}

Parameters

Parameter	Default	Notes
default		The default "location" parameter specifies the target destination - either a page title from your own site or an external URL.
delay	0	The amount of time to wait, in seconds, before automatically redirecting the user to the target page.
location		The external URL to redirect to.

When using this macro, please bear the following points in mind:

This macro does not keep track of whether the target page has had its name or URL changed and as such it's possible for the link to break
To edit a page which redirects instantly, manually add '?redirect=false' to the URL of the page that contains the redirect.
This macro uses JavaScript to redirect, so browsers with JavaScript turned off will require the user to manually click a link to take them to the target location.

This plug-in is available without cost for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. However, if you have found it to be useful, particularly within a commercial environment, please consider making a donation to the author. This will encourage continued development of this and other plug-ins, as well as speeding up the response for your latest maintenance request.

If you wish to donate, it can be done easily with a credit card or bank transfer using Paymate. No account sign-up is required for credit card payments.

This software is released under a BSD License

This macro is compatible with Confluence 1.3.x, 1.4.x and 1.5.x. It has been tested by Adaptavist with Confluence 1.4.1, 1.4.3 and 1.4.4. It has been tested by David Peterson with Confluence 1.5-DR2.

This macro is usually pre-installed with Builder accounts. If you wish to install it on your own Confluence install, please download it from the RandomBits.org website.

Adaptavist maintain a JIRA Project for tracking bug reports and feature requests for this macro. The currently reported items are shown below:

jiraissues: Could not download[ http://jira.adaptavist.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?view=rss&pid=10035&component=10030&statusIds=1&statusIds=3&statusIds=4&statusIds=5&sorter/field=updated&sorter/order=DESC&tempMax=25&reset=true&decorator=none] : caused by : Circular redirect to 'http://jira.adaptavist.com:80/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa'

Examples

Basic Use - Redirecting to a local page

To redirect to a local page in the same space, simply use the page title as the default parameter:

{redirect:Home}

When placed on to a page, any user visiting that page would be immediately taken to the home page of the same Space.

Redirecting to a page in another space

You can redirect to a page in a different space as follows:

{redirect:SpaceKey:Home}

This would immediately redirect to the page called "Home" in the space with key "SpaceKey".

This is quite useful if you want to immediately redirect anyone who accesses The Dashboard via the [USERGUIDE:Breadcrumb Trail] to a specific page within a specific space.

If you merely want to set a different home page for your Builder account, see our tutorial on setting a different Site Homepage. This would still allow people to access The Dashboard but when they first enter your site they would be taken to the home page of a specific space.

External locations

To redirect to an external location, simply specify it's URL. For example:

{redirect:location=http://adaptavist.com}

This would immediately redirect someone to the http://adaptavist.com site.

Setting a delay

By default, the redirect will occur as soon as someone goes to the page that contains the macro. However, you can pause for a while (for example, to display a message explaining that the user should update their bookmarks, etc) by adding a delay:

Your bookmarks are out of date!
{redirect:http://adaptavist.com|delay=5}

This would display the following message for roughly 5 seconds then automatically redirect the user to the link specified:

Your bookmarks are out of date!

Redirection Notice
This page should redirect to http://adaptavist.com in about X seconds.

As you can see, the redirect macro will also add a note macro to the page to ensure that if the browser doesn't have JavaScript enabled the user can click the link to the target page.

Changing an instant redirect

If your page is set to immediately redirect, you're obviously not going to have chance to edit the page should you wish to alter or remove the redirect!

To do this, you need to alter the URL to the page that contains the macro...

Start by getting the URL to the page - for example, the URL to the page you are looking at now is:

http://www.adaptavist.com/display/USERGUIDE/redirect+macro

Tip:
If there is a page that links to the page containing the redirect, you can right-click the link and choose Copy Shortcut or Copy Link Location (depending on which web browser you use).

To temporarily disable the redirect, add "?redirect=false" to the end of the URL, so in our example the URL would become:

http://www.adaptavist.com/display/USERGUIDE/redirect+macro?redirect=false

This URL would then display the page but disable the redirect, allowing you to edit the page to make any changes or even remove the redirect.

Hints and Tips

When you are first adding the macro to a page, set a delay of something like 20 seconds - this way, if there is a problem with the redirect, it's much easier to redisplay the page and edit it to fix the URL, etc. Once you are happy that the redirect is working, you can easily reduce or remove the delay.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q	I merely want to redirect to a page with a similar name, is there an easier way?
A	Yes. Use the alias macro.

redirect macro