Since we have introduced the recipes system, earlier this year, we have received a lot of comments, feedback and ideas of new recipes our customers would like to see.
We have added a few recipes during the last few weeks and will continue to add more in the future. For now, we have added the following recipes:
Block AI bots: This recipe allows you to block AI bots from accessing your website. More precisely, it instructs crawlers used to train AI models to not crawl your website (using the robots.txt mechanism) and, if you enable all the options of the recipe, it prevents those bots from accessing your website altogether.
Redirect a Fully Qualified Domain: This recipe allows you to redirect a fully qualified domain to your root domain. Using this recipe, requests performed to example.com. (note the trailing dot) will be redirected to example.com
Serve a Web App Manifest: This recipe allows you to serve a Web App Manifest file from your website. The Web App Manifest is a JSON file that provides information about your web application and is used by browsers to install your web application to the home screen of a device.
Web App Manifest Content-Type: This recipe is the little sister of the previous one. It allows you to set the Content-Type header of any existing Web App Manifest file of your website to application/manifest+json.
We still have many functional recipe ideas to add to our catalog to help you protect and enhance your website. If you have any recipe ideas you'd like to see added, please let us know by contacting us directly.
We are excited to announce a new addition to the redirection.io platform: Traffic Anomaly Alerts! This powerful feature enables you to receive notifications when unexpected changes in traffic patterns are detected on your website, giving you real-time insights into potential issues such as sudden traffic spikes or drops, or unusual traffic patterns from specific countries or IPs.
This feature, available for "Pro" plan users, adds to our robust notification system, which already allows you to track essential events such as DNS changes, instance status updates, SSL certificate renewals, and more. Now, with Traffic Anomaly Alerts, you can further enhance your website's monitoring and response strategy.
Why Traffic Anomaly Alerts Matter
The traffic anomaly alerts are designed to help you stay on top of your website's performance by providing instant notifications when unusual activity is detected. Key benefits include:
Early Issue Detection: Be alerted to sudden increases in HTTP errors (4xx, 5xx), dips in website traffic, or suspicious spikes from specific countries or IP addresses.
Customizable Thresholds: Tailor the alerts to your specific needs, ensuring that you are notified only when meaningful traffic deviations occur, and preventing unnecessary notifications.
Faster Response Times: By knowing instantly when traffic anomalies occur, you can act quickly to resolve issues and minimize potential damage to your website's performance or user experience.
How to Set Up Traffic Anomaly Alerts
Configuring a traffic anomaly alert in redirection.io is simple and flexible. Here’s how you can do it:
Select the Notification Type: Choose the "Traffic anomaly" notification option to start setting up your custom alert.
Define the Monitoring Criteria: In this step, you’ll select a Log View to monitor (e.g., all 4xx errors, or traffic from a specific IP address, the traffic under a specific path). Then, set up the threshold for triggering alerts. You can preview when the notification would have been triggered based on recent data, allowing you to fine-tune your settings.
Examples of potential configurations:
Notify when more than 10% of all traffic consists of 4xx errors within a 10-minute window.
Alert when the total number of requests drops below a certain threshold within the last 5 minutes.
Trigger an alert when traffic from a particular IP or country exceeds a specified volume.
Select Notification Channels: Choose how and where you want to be notified — email, Slack, or webhook.
Enable the Notification: Finally, activate the alert. You can pause or mute it later if needed, ensuring you're only notified when it's truly necessary.
Fine-Tuning Your Alerts
We recommend experimenting with the thresholds to make sure they fit your website’s typical traffic patterns. In step 2, the preview functionality allows you to simulate how the alert would behave based on historical data. This ensures that you set conditions that are sensitive enough to catch real anomalies without triggering false alarms.
The ability to customize alerts to your website’s needs provides a proactive monitoring solution, helping you mitigate issues before they escalate into bigger problems, and ensuring that your team remains informed in real time.
Get Started Today!
Traffic Anomaly Alerts are now live for all users on the "Pro" plan. Set them up in your project to start benefiting from better control, insight, and rapid response capabilities when traffic issues arise on your website. With this feature, redirection.io continues to provide you with the tools you need to manage website performance efficiently.
If you have any questions or need assistance setting up your alerts, don’t hesitate to consult our documentation or contact support!
Last year, we have launched the redirection.io managed instances, a great way to use redirection.io without having to install and maintain the redirection.io agent on your servers. With the managed instances, it takes a few clicks to get started with redirection.io, and you can start monitoring and fixing your website's redirections in no time.
In certain setups, however, the backend service used to serve your website does not correctly handle the traffic coming from reverse proxies, and considers that a large amount of requests arriving from a specific range of IP addresses is suspicious. Automated security systems are perfectly right to be cautious, but in this case, it can lead to false positives, and the managed instances might be blocked by the backend service if it is not correctly configured to accept traffic from our managed instances.
This was the case with Vercel, a very popular platform to deploy websites and serverless functions. While perfectly working most of the time, we have recently begun to receive reports from users that a part of their traffic was being refused by their Vercel backend. After some investigation, we found that Vercel's security systems were blocking some of our managed instances IP addresses, and on some Vercel websites only. Sharing this information with Vercel, we have been able to confirm that the issue was due to the way Vercel's security systems were configured, and that it was possible to whitelist the managed instances IP addresses - except for Vercel Enterprise plan subscribers.
To make it easier and more reliable for our users to use redirection.io with Vercel, we have developed a Vercel middleware that packages the Web Assembly version of the agent, that we already distribute as an open source project. This middleware is a small piece of code that you can add to your Vercel project, and that will automatically handle the incoming requests and apply the rules configured in your redirection.io project.
Deploying the redirection.io Vercel middleware requires developer access to your Vercel project and can be done in a few steps:
Install the redirection.io Vercel middleware in your Vercel application;
$ npm install @redirection.io/vercel-middleware
// or with yarn
$ yarn add @redirection.io/vercel-middleware
Configure the redirection.io Vercel middleware with your redirection.io project's key as a Vercel environment variable named REDIRECTIONIO_TOKEN;
That's it! Your Vercel application is now using the redirection.io Vercel middleware, and you can start monitoring and fixing your website's redirections in no time.
TL;DR;: We are introducing redirection.io recipes, a collection of 1-click install rulesets created to ensure you get the most out of using redirection.io.
We're thrilled to announce a game-changing addition to our platform that's set to revolutionize the way you manage your website's traffic. Say hello to redirection.io recipes – your ultimate traffic rule companion!
redirection.io has always been more than just a redirection tool. Our platform offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to give you unparalleled control over your site's traffic and performance. From analyzing traffic patterns to creating complex rules for redirects, meta tags management, response headers, and beyond, redirection.io has been your go-to solution for optimizing website performance.
But we understand that with great power comes great complexity. While many of our users have been successfully utilizing our platform to its fullest potential, we've also noticed that some of you may feel a bit overwhelmed when it comes to creating complex rules. That's why we've been hard at work behind the scenes to develop a solution that simplifies the process without compromising functionality.
Enter redirection.io recipes – the answer to your traffic rule woes!
Think of recipes as your personal collection of use-cases and practical solutions tailored specifically for redirection.io. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started, recipes are here to guide you through even the most intricate traffic management scenarios.
So, what exactly can you expect from redirection.io recipes?
Simplified Rule Creation: Say goodbye to confusion and hello to clarity with our new assisted mode for creating complex rules. With recipes by your side, you'll be able to navigate the rule creation process with confidence, no matter your skillset.
Extensive Use Cases: From basic redirections to advanced meta tags and response headers management, redirection.io recipes cover a wide range of scenarios to suit your needs. Need to implement folder redirections? We've got you covered. Want to enhance your site's security with custom headers? Consider it done.
User-Friendly Interface: We've designed recipes to seamlessly integrate into the redirection.io platform, ensuring that you can access them whenever you need them.
Constantly Evolving: The best part? We're just getting started. While our initial batch of recipes covers a variety of common use cases, we're committed to expanding our library to include even more solutions based on your feedback. Have an idea for a Recipe you'd like to see? We want to hear from you!
Recipes can also act as a source of inspiration for your own rules. You can use the "Add a long cache duration for the website images" recipe to learn how to cache your images more efficiently, and then apply the same principles to other types of content on your site. By exploring the recipes library, you'll gain valuable insights into how redirection.io can help you optimize your website's performance, security, and overall user experience.
What can redirection.io recipes do?
Many of the scenarios covered with redirection.io recipes should be correctly implemented in most professional websites, just like how the popularization of https a few years ago slightly improved the quality and security of the Web.
The recipes library has launched with a quite large collection of features, that cover different topics:
SEO Mastery: Elevate your website's search engine ranking with recipes like "Change the meta title" and "Google Search Console property". These recipes provide invaluable insights and tools to boost your site's visibility and attract more organic traffic.
Flexibility and Control: Tailor your website's functionality to suit your specific needs with recipes like "Redirect except a path" and "Request a password for a folder". With these customizable solutions, you have the flexibility to implement unique features and restrictions as desired.
Some recipes provide a high level of detail that you can learn and draw inspiration from. The Referrer Policy recipe, explains in detail how to improve the privacy of your customers. The Permissions Policy recipe is a complete assistant for adding the support for Permission Policy on your website and slightly enhancing trust between users and your website:
Your first steps with redirection.io recipes
Ready to give redirection.io recipes a try? Head over to our website or log in to your redirection.io account now to explore our growing library of recipes and start optimizing your website's performance like never before.
We can't wait to see how you'll use this feature to take your website management to the next level. And remember, this is just the beginning – with redirection.io recipes, the possibilities are endless!
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.
A domain being added to the redirection.io managed instances. In a few steps, a domain can be configured and run redirection.io, without any infrastructure operation.
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 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!
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:
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.
The segments are displayed on the members list
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!
As of today, it is possible to temporarily disable a rule using a new "Enable the rule" switch in the rule edition form. All the pre-existing rules have been let enabled by default, and all future traffic management rules will be enabled by default. Just hit the switch to have the rule be disabled.
👉 Please note that, after you have enabled or disabled a rule, you still have to publish this change (as any other change you would make in your ruleset) for it to be applied on your production website.
One could wonder why such a feature was not available in the past 🤔 In fact, it has always been possible to remove a rule and re-enable it later on, by using the rules history mechanism, which allows to restore a past ruleset. This new feature just makes it a lot easier and straightforward to temporarily shutdown one or more rules and still keep them on hand, so it can be re-enabled in a quick way when needed.
On the other side, it may sound weird to want to temporarily disable one or more redirects on your website. This feature has been requested by several customers and can be used in several use cases:
to prepare a set of new rules that will have to be enabled in a few days only;
to execute a rule only during certain periods, and to be able to deactivate it outside these time slots;
to perform A/B tests on redirection targets.
Prepare a set of new redirect rules upfront
Imagine that a new country section is being launched on your website in a few days. The rollout of these country pages will come with a set of new redirects, that you will want to enable only when the new section goes live. Using the "enable / disable" feature, you can now prepare the new rules, and enable these rules when the backend website is ready.
Execute a rule only during certain periods
Imagine that a section of your online store is only opened during event sales, which take place on the first Wednesday of the month. The rest of the time, you prefer a redirect to a specific landing page of your website. Disabling this redirect rule to open the event sales shopping page(s) is a quick way to "open the doors" 🔓🚪
Run A/B redirect tests
You could also want to test a set of redirects over a certain period of time, measure their effectiveness on your business / revenue, and eventually re-enable those rules if necessary.
redirection.io offers several ways to be notified when things happen on your website or in your project.
We have launched today new "team notifications", to keep your team or coworkers informed of the occurrence of an event in the redirection.io project. For the moment, the notification feature is able to send notifications to Slack channels, email addresses (a mailing-list, for example) or to webhook URLs (for automation).
This feature is available only to "Pro" plans and is designed to keep your colleagues informed that something is happening in the project. This "something" can be an event of different types:
Many redirection.io users have made our logs trail a central part of their strategy to discover traffic issues, and ultimately ensure that their website is running smoothly. Some of them even explained us that they keep a sticky browser tab with redirection.io opened, to regularly check "how things go well".
But in the meantime, some other redirection.io users were missing a long-asked feature, a regular reminder that would ping them if something was going wrong. While redirection.io is a great solution to monitor the traffic of your website and ensure that it runs well without issues, not everyone has the reflex to check the logs on a daily basis. As they say: what works too well tends to be forgotten!
This is the reason why we are launching today a new weekly digest email, available to all our customers right now 🎉 It features all the important information about your project, and all the events that occurred the week before:
how did the traffic evolve? 📈
did new errors happen, that should need some attention (and maybe new redirect rules)? 🔃
are your redirection.io agent instances healthy, or do they need upgrades? ⏩
For more readability and efficiency, the weekly digest email embeds some charts so you can notice issues in a matter of seconds:
To enable this new weekly digest, head to your profile preferences. There, you can subscribe to receive this weekly email for all or some of your projects. Of course, if you manage dozen of projects, you may not want to receive as many emails as you have projects, so pick only the most important ones!
Once done, simply wait for next Monday morning, and you'll get some news of your website 🙂
