In today's fast-paced digital landscape, safeguarding your online assets is of paramount importance. Whether you're protecting sensitive data, ensuring the privacy of your users, or simply maintaining control over your web services, having robust security measures in place is essential. That's why we're thrilled to introduce a new feature in our SaaS platform - Multiple Project Keys - designed to give you greater control and flexibility over your projects in redirection.io.

The Project Key: The Project Configuration Secret

Before diving into the new feature, let's first understand the significance of the "project key." This unique string is the linchpin of your redirection.io project. It's the secret sauce that binds an instance to a specific project, allowing it to access and interact with the associated rules and logs. By default, every project receives a project key, which you can directly use to configure your redirection.io agent instance. However, there are scenarios where having multiple project keys can be helpful.

Why Multiple Project Keys Matter

Here are a few compelling reasons why you might want to utilize multiple project keys:

• Enhanced Security: If your project key becomes public knowledge, it could pose a significant risk. With multiple project keys, you can rotate or change keys as needed to maintain the utmost security.
• Development-Production Segregation: To maintain a clear separation between development and production environments, you can use specific project keys for each. This way, your development team can work without access to the production project key, ensuring data integrity.
• Key Expiration: Sometimes, you might want a project key to have a limited lifespan. With the option to set expiration dates on project keys, you can control when they stop working.

Introducing Multiple Project Keys

redirection.io now offers the capability to create as many project keys as you require. Each project key can be customized with a name, helping you clarify why it was created, and an optional expiration date, ensuring it ceases to work after a set time.

Key Rotation for Improved Security

If you suspect that your project key has been compromised or simply want to enhance security, our platform makes it easy to rotate project keys. Here's how you can do it:

1. Create a new perpetual project key that will serve as the replacement.
2. Add an expiration date to the old project key, ensuring it will no longer function after that date.
3. Update your instance configurations with the new project key.

The graphical interface also displays the last time a project key was used, allowing you to determine when it's safe to remove the old key. This way, you can rest assured that all your instances have been updated, and the old project key is no longer in use.

The introduction of Multiple Project Keys in redirection.io is a significant step forward. With this feature, you can enhance the security of your projects, maintain clear separations between environments, and have full control over the lifespan of your project keys. To learn more about this feature, check out our documentation about instances and project keys.

We're thrilled to announce a game-changing feature - "Managed Instances" - designed to simplify your experience with redirection.io.

Historically, redirection.io was a self-hosted hybrid product, which means that users had to install the agent on their own servers. Now, with Managed Instances, we offer a hosted version, taking the hassle out of infrastructure management. Basically, users must configure their domain name to target it to our infrastructure, and it works in minutes.

• target your domain DNS to our servers
• works in minutes
• automatic SSL is provided

Shortly said, a redirection.io managed instance is a redirection.io agent server hosted on the infrastructure provided by redirection.io. It is capable of handling redirects for your blank domains, and can also act as a reverse proxy for your websites, with all the redirection.io superpowers inside.

Along with our historical "hybrid" deployment, and the "On-Premise" deployment mode, we cover a very flexible and large range of situations, making redirection.io the most versatile SEO reverse proxy out there:

Fully managed SaaS

• everything on our servers
• works in minutes

Hybrid SaaS & hosted

• the redirectionio-agent is installed on your infrastructure

On premise

• the whole platform is deployed on your own servers

Benefits of Managed Instances

redirection.io managed instances are a great option for users who don't want to manage their own infrastructure, or who don't have the technical skills to do so. But there are other key benefits to using managed instances:

• Automatic SSL: Managed Instances automatically generate SSL certificates for your domain names (using Let's Encrypt). It takes seconds, saving you from certificate management complexities.
• Global Presence: Our infrastructure spans multiple Points of Presence worldwide, ensuring lightning-fast redirection rule execution for your end users.
• Hassle-Free: No need to manage your own infrastructure. Simply configure your domain name to point to our infrastructure, and we'll handle the rest.
• High Availability: Managed Instances are replicated across multiple data centers, offering a highly available service without any management on your part.

We are very happy with the results so far, and we are looking forward to have more users using it. The technology behind it is very solid, and we are confident that it will scale well - it has been designed for this. Each managed instance is isolated from the others, both in terms of data management or CPU consumption, and we have a lot of monitoring in place to ensure that everything is working as expected.

Cost and Availability

Managed Instances come at no additional cost compared to our standard plans. They're available to all users, regardless of their subscription plan. You can create Managed Instances directly in the manager, under the "instances" section.

There are however some restrictions on the number of managed instances that can be created, depending on the plan, and on the amount of bandwidth that a project can use each month. These limits and quotas are described in our documentation.

Getting Started

Managed instances have been in production for several months now, and we have already many customers using it successfully. The use cases are very diverse, from small websites to large e-commerce websites:

• Redirect blank or naked domain names.
• Create a company URL shortening service.
• Get all the powerful features of redirection.io without installing any components on your website. It's compatible with various platforms, including major eCommerce SaaS solutions, GitHub Pages, Vercel, Netlify, Shopify, and more.

Setting up Managed Instances is a breeze. We provide extensive documentation to guide you, and our dedicated support team is ready to assist with any questions.

Ready to simplify your redirection.io experience? Reach out to us, and we'll enable Managed Instances for your project. You can also read more about managed instances in our documentation.

Join the growing community of users who have already embraced this convenient and efficient way to manage the traffic of their website. We're excited to have you on board!

We're thrilled to announce a valuable addition to our service - the "Additional Logs Retention" feature, designed to empower you with more control and insights over your data.

Traditionally, logs were stored for 1 to 2 weeks, depending on your plan. However, we understand that analyzing your traffic over a more extended period is often essential. That's why we're excited to offer this feature to our "Starter" and "Pro" plans, allowing you to retain logs for up to a generous 12 weeks.

Why is this important?

• Real-time Data: With redirection.io, traffic logs are collected in real time, ensuring you always have access to the freshest data.
• Deep Analysis: For users who seek comprehensive insights, having access to logs on a longer period lets you dive deep into your traffic patterns and behaviors.
• Compliance: For those with compliance requirements, extended logs retention helps you meet your obligations by maintaining a historical record of your traffic data.
• SEO Audits: SEO audits often recommend analyzing logs over a complete search engine crawling window, which can span up to two months. Now, you can easily align with these recommendations.

How to Extend Logs Retention:

• Starter Plan: Project administrators can effortlessly extend logs retention directly in the manager under the project billing section.
• Pro Plan: Administrators can simply get in touch with their dedicated redirection.io account manager to discuss and implement the logs retention extension.

Unlock the power of extended logs retention today, and gain deeper insights into your traffic. Your data, your control! ➡️ Read more in our documentation

Have questions or need assistance? Reach out to our support team anytime. We're here to help you make the most of this new feature.

Thank you for choosing redirection.io for your traffic management needs. Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements coming your way!

We have recently improved the the redirection.io rules system by introducing negation support for the "Method" and "Backend Response Status Code" triggers, providing you with greater flexibility and control over rule execution.

In a redirection.io rule, Triggers define the conditions that incoming HTTP requests must meet for the rule to be applied. For example, the "Method" trigger filters requests based on the HTTP method used, while the "Backend Response Status Code" trigger allows you to restrict triggering based on the status code generated by your backend application.

With our latest update, you can now utilize negation for these triggers. For example, you can define rules that trigger when the HTTP method is not GET or POST, or when the backend response status code is not 200 or 301. This new capability enables you to refine your rule logic and execute specific actions based on negated conditions.

The feature is immedialtely available for the customers who use our "hosted instances" or the managed Cloudflare workers. Other deployment modes (nginx or Apache modules, agent reverse proxy, manually added Cloudflare worker, Fastly Compute@Edge, etc.) needs to be updated to use at least the redirection.io agent 2.7.0 or libredirectionio 2.8.0.

To learn more about negation support and explore other features of the redirection.io rules system, refer to our documentation about triggers. We value your feedback and are continuously working to improve our services based on your needs. Thank you for choosing redirection.io as your trusted solution for efficient traffic management!

We have released lately the version 2.7.0 of the redirection.io agent, our software designed for logging HTTP traffic, analyzing requests and performing responses transformations. In this release, we've introduced new configuration directives that further enhance the agent's capabilities. These directives provide greater control and flexibility over the logging of access logs, the utilization of HTTP keep-alive between the agent and the backend, and the configuration of backend request timeouts.

Here are the key additions in version 2.7.0:

• keep_alive.enabled: With this directive, you can enable or disable the HTTP keep-alive feature between the agent and the backend. By default, this feature is enabled, ensuring optimal performance. Adjusting this setting allows you to fine-tune the agent's behavior to match your infrastructure needs.
• timeout: This directive allows you to configure the timeout duration, in seconds, for backend requests. By default, this feature is disabled, but with this new directive, you can restrict the maximum time a connection will remain opened to your backend. This is particularly useful for optimizing the performance of your infrastructure in case your application suffers performance issues on certain paths.
• access_log: This directive allows you to enable or disable the logging of access logs in the specified log locations. By default, access log are disabled, giving you the flexibility to enable it based on your specific requirements.

These new features are documented in the "agent configuration reference" documentation page. To benefit from the improved performance and added functionalities, we encourage all our customers to keep their redirection.io agents up to date. By doing so, you'll always have access to the latest features and enhancements, empowering you to streamline your traffic management and maximize efficiency.

👉 read more about the update process

We're pleased to announce the addition of the Aggregated Logs Details Panel to the redirection.io manager. This new feature brings convenience and efficiency to your analysis of HTTP traffic logs, allowing you to delve deeper into your most frequent requests.

In the logs screen of the manager, you can already group requests by various criteria like URL, HTTP method, response status code, and user agent. However, we've now made it even better by enabling the display of details for grouped requests.

For example, if you want to examine the most frequently requested URLs, simply group the requests by URL and click on a specific URL. You'll instantly access a comprehensive list of matching requests, complete with a preview of the most recent ones. You can easily navigate through these requests using the intuitive "next" and "previous" buttons.

This small yet handy feature provides valuable insights into your traffic logs, allowing you to quickly identify any issues or patterns. It's perfect for troubleshooting or conducting in-depth analysis.

We strive to make your experience with the redirection.io manager as seamless as possible, and Aggregated Logs Details is another step towards achieving that goal.

If you have any questions or need assistance, our support team is ready to help!

We are thrilled to announce a new feature in redirection.io that will make managing your sitemap.xml files easier than ever before. Our new "Sitemap management" feature is now available for "Pro" plan subscribers and allows you to define the content of your sitemap files directly within redirection.io.

Creating and managing sitemap files is an essential part of website management. However, it can often be a time-consuming and manual process, especially for larger websites. With our Sitemap management feature, you can avoid the need for developers to deploy a new version of the website every time a sitemap.xml file needs to be updated. This feature is useful in many professional contexts when the sitemap.xml management is not fully automated.

With the new redirection.io Sitemap action, you can easily define the content of your website's sitemap.xml file(s) directly from redirection.io, and serve it at the location specified in the "Source URL" trigger.

By using redirection.io to manage your sitemap files, you can improve your productivity and focus on more important tasks. This feature, combined with the redirection.io crawler, guarantees better reactivity and the ability to cover all the pages of your website, which in turn improves your website's SEO. Additionally, you can configure several sitemaps using this action, which is perfect for larger websites or for keeping sitemaps properly sorted.

To get started with Sitemap management in redirection.io, upgrade to our "Pro" plan today. And as always, let us know your thoughts and feedback! We're excited to see how this feature will help you better manage your website!

We strongly believe that using the redirection.io manager is a nice way to manage the traffic of websites at scale, and that it offers many nice features to create redirects or traffic management rules.

However, there are some cases where you would want to avoid using the graphical interface to create redirection rules:

• to create a large number of rules, if the CSV import format is not flexible enough for your requirements;
• to create a rule when a given event occurs (for example, when the URL of one page changes in your Content Management System);
• when you want a complete control over the created rule (attach many markers, use complex triggers or actions, etc.).

There are indeed many cases where it may be desirable to be able to create rules without human intervention! This is why we have launched, earlier this week, a new version of our public API. In a few words, the newly available API endpoints allow to retrieve the projects of an organization, list both the published and draft rules, create, edit or delete rules (and drafts), publish the draft changes.

The API supports all types of triggers, actions, markers and variables - which means that web traffic automation can be taken to another level!

An OpenAPI specification is available at https://api.redirection.io/docs.json and a tutorial has been published in our documentation. Let us know your feelings about our API!

👉 API documentation: https://api.redirection.io/

After growing requests from our customers for an ARM version of the redirection.io agent, we will now propose such ARM builds in our packages repository.

ARM is a processors architecture which can be used as an alternative to the more traditional x86 architecture. Many Cloud providers now propose ARM instances, which can sometimes offer a better price/performance ratio, and can be a good solution to host the redirection.io agent as a reverse proxy.

The ARM version of the redirection.io agent is available as a tar.gz archive in our repositories, from the new release 2.4.2 and for all future releases. For example, the version 2.4.2 is available in the folder https://packages.redirection.io/dist/stable/2/any/2.4.2/ (see the "aarch64" files):

Index of /dist/stable/2/any/2.4.2/
../
redirectionio-agent_2.4.2-1_any_aarch64.sha256sum    08-Sep-2022 15:03         188
redirectionio-agent_2.4.2-1_any_aarch64.sig          08-Sep-2022 15:03    10424675
redirectionio-agent_2.4.2-1_any_aarch64.tar.gz       08-Sep-2022 15:02    10526417
redirectionio-agent_2.4.2-1_any_amd64.sha256sum      08-Sep-2022 14:50         186
redirectionio-agent_2.4.2-1_any_amd64.sig            08-Sep-2022 14:50    10012569
redirectionio-agent_2.4.2-1_any_amd64.tar.gz         08-Sep-2022 14:50    10084589"

The latest version of the stable agent is also always available in https://packages.redirection.io/dist/stable/2/any:

• for x86: redirectionio-agent-latest_any_amd64.tar.gz
• for ARM 64: redirectionio-agent-latest_any_aarch64.tar.gz

We do not propose distribution-specific packages for these ARM versions for the moment, so you will have to build your own systemd unit service file to run the agent. However, the agent tar.gz archive contains a redirectionio-agenty.service systemd file, that you will usually want to put under /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants:

[Unit]
Description=Redirectionio Agent
Documentation=https://redirection.io
After=network-online.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment=RIO_PATH_CONF=/etc/redirectionio
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/redirectionio
Restart=always

User=redirectionio
Group=redirectionio

ExecStart=/usr/bin/redirectionio-agent --config-file ${RIO_PATH_CONF}/agent.yml

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

You are now ARMed to perform smooth redirections on your website! ✨

As redirection.io is becoming more and more used by large organizations, the roles and permissions orchestration within a project can become quite challenging to set up. Moreover, redirection.io offers a large panel of actions and empowers our customers with many new possibilities towards the traffic of their website... and with great power come a great responsibility 🙂

Some large organizations requested the ability to restrict permissions by path, to prevent customers to manage the traffic outside the site sections under their responsibility. Several use-case were suggested:

• in international contexts, it can be desirable that various users of the same project can only manage disjoint parts of the website. For example, the French marketing team should be authorized to manage redirects under /fr, but not under /de or /uk, which should be reserved respectively to the German and British teams
• the customers support team of a company should be able to manage the rules under the /faq path, while the /shop part of the website should only be managed by the eCommerce team
• etc.

We have therefore introduced a new concept: the project segmentation. From now on, "Pro" plan projects can define segments at the project level, which help organize rules and can be used to restrict the permissions of users within the project.

How to create project segments

Organization and project Administrators can add, edit and delete segments under the "Segments" tab, in the project settings:

In order to add a segment, click on the "Add a segment" button, and fill in the form:

You can add as many conditions as you want: all the rules for which the "Source URL" starts with one of the provided strings will be considered as part of the segment. This means that several segments can share some URLs. It also means that a segment can be a restriction on a given domain, or even on a given protocol (scheme).

How to restrict a member to one or several segments

Once segments have been defined, project members can be attached to one or more segments, to restrict their rules edition permissions. It is even possible to define a segment restriction directly when inviting a user in the project:

1. Go to the "members" tab, on the project settings screen. Hit the "Invite another user", and choose either the "Contributor" or "Publisher" role. The "Segments restrictions" dropdown appears and lets you choose one or more segments that must be attached to this user once the invitation will be accepted.
2. The segments are displayed on the members list
3. A user with segment restrictions will only be allowed to create rules for which the "Source URL" starts with one of its segments contraints.

Segment-restricted users have limited actions:

• they cannot create or edit rules for which the Source URL does not match their segment restrictions
• they cannot mark for deletion rules that are not part of their segments
• a Publisher with segment restriction can only publish rules within their segment. If some draft rules are not part of the Publisher segment(s), they won't be published, and will remain untouched
• a Publisher with segment restrictions cannot rollback to a previous version of the ruleset, as this could introduce changes outside his segment restrictions

Bonus: filter the rules based on their segment

Whatever their segment restrictions, all the project members can see the list of all the rules that have been configured in the project. However, as a user it can sometimes be useful to list only the rules that you can edit - so, a new "Segment" filter has been added in the rules list screen. It allows to isolate the rules that are specific to one or more segments:

With this new "segments" feature, redirection.io adds a new layer of fine-grained administration capabilities, to help delegate the traffic management to several entities within large organizations and websites. The feature is available as of today for all the "Pro" organizations!

➡ Read the full documentation about Project segments