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Configuring URL forwarding or redirects with Page Rules

​​ Overview

If you want to forward or redirect traffic to a different URL, you have the following options using Cloudflare:

  • Single Redirects: Create static or dynamic redirects at the zone level. Dynamic redirects are advanced URL redirects, such as redirects based on the source country of requests.
  • Bulk Redirects: Define a large number (thousands or even millions) of essentially static URL redirects at the account level.
  • Page Rules: Should only be used when the other two options do not meet your use case.

​​ Redirect with Page Rules

To configure URL forwarding or redirects using Page Rules:

  1. Log into your Cloudflare account.
  2. Click the appropriate Cloudflare account for the domain where you want to add URL forwarding.
  3. Go to Rules > Page Rules.
  4. Under Page Rules, click Create Page Rule. The Create Page Rule for  dialog opens.
  5. Under If the URL matches, enter the URL or URL pattern that should match the rule. 
  6. In Pick a Setting, choose Forwarding URL from the drop-down menu.
  7. For Select status code, choose 301 (Permanent Redirect) or 302 (Temporary Redirect).
  8. Enter the destination URL.
  9. To finish, click Save and Deploy.

Example Page Rule configuration for forwarding URLs with HTTP status code 301 (permanent redirect) or 302 (temporary redirect).

​​ Forwarding examples

Imagine you want site visitors to easily reach your website for a variety of URL patterns.  For instance, the Page Rule URL patterns *www.example.com/products and *example.com/products match:

http://example.com/products


http://www.example.com/products


https://www.example.com/products


https://blog.example.com/products


https://www.blog.example.com/products

but do not match:

http://www.example.com/blog/products (extra directory before the +)  
or
http://www.example.comproducts (no trailing slash)

Once you have created the pattern that matches what you want, click the Forwarding toggle. That exposes a field where you can enter the address I want requests forwarded to.

https://example.com/products

If I enter the address above in the forwarding box and click Add Rule, within a few seconds any requests that match the pattern I entered will automatically be forwarded with a 302 Redirect to the new URL.

​​ Advanced forwarding options

If you use a basic redirect, such as forwarding the root domain to www.example.com, then you lose anything else in the URL.

For example, you could set up the pattern:

example.com

And have it forward to:

http://www.example.com

However, if someone entered: example.com/some-particular-page.html They would be redirected to:

www.example.com

Instead of:

www.example.com/some-particular-page.html

The solution is to use variables. Each wildcard corresponds to a variable when can be referenced in the forwarding address. The variables are represented by a $ followed by a number. To refer to the first wildcard you’d use $1, to refer to the second wildcard you’d use $2, and so on.

To fix the forwarding from the root to www in the above example, you could use the same pattern:

example.com/*

You’d then set up the following URL for traffic to forward to:

http://www.example.com/$1

In this case, if someone went to:

example.com/some-particular-page.html

They’d be redirected to:

http://www.example.com/some-particular-page.html