Redirects change the URL in the browser; rewrites proxy to a different path while the URL stays put
Redirects and rewrites solve opposite problems. A redirect changes the URL in the browser; a rewrite keeps the URL the visitor sees and proxies to a different internal path. Both are ordered lists with the same lifecycle: edit them as drafts, then Deploy to promote them together.
1. Open the rules section#
On the domain detail page choose the Advanced category, then Redirects (URL redirect rules and imports.) for redirect rules or Rewrites for internal proxying. Both sections present an ordered list; the first matching deployed rule wins, disabled rules are ignored, and a request that matches nothing passes through to the origin unchanged.
2. Write redirect rules#
A redirect source is a regex pattern with group substitution, so a target like /new/$1 reuses the segments the source captured. Unsafe targets — javascript: URLs or private hosts — are rejected. CSV import can replace an entire draft set at once, and rows that fail validation are reported individually instead of being silently dropped. When a deployed rule matches, the response is a 301 or 302 with the expected Location header.
3. Write rewrite rules#
A rewrite keeps the visitor's URL unchanged while proxying to a different internal path, optionally pinned to a selected origin — including the Static Pages pseudo-origin. Destinations must be safe absolute paths; external URLs are not allowed. A single rule carries at most three conditions, and every rule stays reviewable in the draft before you deploy it.
4. Prove which rule ran#
Send a request with the x-weboptiva-debug: 1 header and the response tells you which redirect or rewrite rule applied — or that none did. This is the fastest verification loop when several patterns could plausibly match the same URL.
Expected result#
The rule list shows your new entries as draft, and after Deploy the live configuration applies them in order. Nothing changes for visitors until that deploy happens, so you can stage an aggressive rule set safely. Related: Static file overrides.