Automatic redirects ability reference

What Automatic redirects needs before these load

No companion plugin is needed for the module to register, but where each redirect is stored depends on what is installed. The stores are tried in a fixed order: Redirection, Rank Math, Yoast SEO Premium, All in One SEO Pro, then SEOPress Pro. Rank Math counts only when its redirections are actually being served, which is not the case before its setup wizard is finished. With none of them available, WordPress's own old-slug handling is the only cover. Both calls need manage_options.

Automatic redirects editions

pro

Agent skills shipped

redirects

When a redirect is created

The hook runs on every save that goes through wp_update_post: the block editor, the REST API, WP-CLI and Pro's own abilities alike. It acts only when a post was published before the save and is still published after it, on post types that are publicly viewable and are not attachments; autosaves and revisions are ignored. A changed slug and a changed parent both count, and when a page moves, up to 50 of its published descendants get redirects of their own, because their addresses moved with it.

It runs late on purpose, after Redirection's own monitor and Rank Math's automatic post redirect have had their turn. If one of them already created the same redirect, GoBuildWP records it as existing instead of adding a second.

Loops, chains and other people's redirects

Before creating anything it removes a redirect whose source is the new address, which is what renaming A to B and back to A would otherwise leave behind, and it repoints redirects that target the old address so a visitor takes one hop rather than two. Both repairs apply only to redirects GoBuildWP created for the same post, tracked in the wppilot_pro_auto_redirect_owned option (up to 2,000 entries). A hand-made redirect is never removed or repointed; it is reported as a conflict for a person to decide.

Reading redirects-status

Turning monitoring off does not delete provider redirects already created; deleting records is separate owner-reviewed work. The result names the active provider, lists every provider with whether it is available and whether its own slug-change watcher is on, and returns the most recent automatic redirects (20 by default, up to 50; the log keeps 50). Each entry has an action: created, exists (an enabled redirect to the same place was already there), disabled (one exists but is switched off, so the old address still fails), conflict (the old address already goes somewhere else), core (no redirect plugin, but WordPress's old-slug redirect covers a post's slug change), uncovered (no redirect plugin and nothing covers a page or parent move, so the old address will return 404) or error.

Representative call sequence

This sequence describes the documented calls and checks to perform. It is not a recorded result from an installed WordPress site. Inspect returned errors and partial results, then verify the saved values and affected output before proceeding.

Shorten a page's slug on a site running Rank Math, and check that the old address still reaches it.

1. 01 wppilot/redirects-status Confirms automatic redirects are on and that Rank Math is the active provider, not merely installed.
2. 02 wppilot/update-post Changes the page's slug. The save itself triggers the redirect; there is no separate call to make.
3. 03 wppilot/redirects-status Shows the newest entry for that post. created or exists is the result you want; conflict or uncovered means a person has to act in the redirect plugin. The log records what was stored, not what is served: request the old address from outside the site (for example with curl -I) and check for a 301 whose Location is the new address, because a page cache or a server rule can still answer first.

Questions about Automatic redirects