Introduction
Learn how to redirect sites on Pantheon.
This guide provides information on how to:
Before getting started, keep in mind the following considerations:
htaccess
Pantheon does not support managing redirects in .htaccess files, because they are ignored by nginx for reduced resource consumption and increased efficiency. This configuration is standard across all Pantheon sites, and modifications to the nginx.conf file are not supported.
Using .htaccess is generally not recommended - even for sites running Apache. Instead, we suggest handling domain-level redirects by setting a primary domain, and handling page-level redirects in PHP within your site's configuration file.
Advantages of redirecting via Primary Domain + PHP instead of .htaccess include:
Logic and decisions can be made that a web server would have no context for, as it is executable code with application state awareness. Conditional logic, regular expressions, and much more are possible.
Configuration tends to be more maintainable as Drupal and WordPress developers are typically more familiar with PHP than Apache rewrite rules.
Because
settings.phpandwp-config.phpare parsed very early in the bootstrap process, redirects like this are "cheap" with low overhead. If you use a 301 redirect, the Pantheon Global CDN will cache it as well.
Avoid Excessive Redirects
When using multiple snippets, be sure to step through the logic. This is particularly important when redirecting to a common domain while also incorporating redirects for specific pages. All if conditional statements need to be in the correct order. For example, a wholesale redirect executed prior to redirects for specific pages would likely prevent the second statement from being evaluated.