JRedirectGenerator

Copyright (C) 2017 Vincent A. Cicirello.

https://www.cicirello.org/

Command line utility for generating simple html files for redirecting old urls to new. The intended use of this utility is for those who do not have sufficient access to otherwise generate 301 redirects.

If you use the provided default redirect page template, in the file redirect.template, then each generated html file:

• uses a meta refresh directive to redirect to the new url,

• has a robots noindex directive, which will hopefully have the effect of causing the old url to drop out of search results

• includes a canonical link pointing to the new url

• body with a simple javascript redirect in case user's browser doesn't follow the meta refresh

• body also has a link to click in case javascript is also disabled

The template can be altered as desired, provided you place <<CANONICAL_TO>> wherever the target address is needed.

Configuration file, redirect.config specifies the local root of the local development copy of the website on the first non-comment line. Comments are indicated by #. After the line containing the complete path to the local root of the site, this file should contain one line for each desired redirect. Each of these lines should include a pair separated by space or tabs. First item of pair is the location within the site (relative to root) to redirect from. This can be a relative path to a file or to a directory. To indicate a directory, end with a trailing / otherwise a file will be assumed. If a directory, the redirect file will be an index.html in that directory, otherwise it will be a file with the exact name you provide including extension. The second element of the pair is the full canonical url of the new location, including either http or https as relevant. See the provided redirect.config for an example.

Usage:

• java -jar JRedirectGenerator.jar -help

  Outputs the usage instructions (this output).

• java -jar JRedirectGenerator.jar

  Generates redirect pages using configuration from redirect.config and the page template from redirect.template.

• java -jar JRedirectGenerator.jar file.config

  Allows specifying the configuration file that contains the redirects.

• java -jar JRedirectGenerator.jar file1.config file2.template

  Allows specifying both configuration and template files, in that order.