Some URL redirections have stopped working. Others continue to work. Reasons?

[stuart9]

Some general information: Instead of using Google Analytics to measure my traffic, I use the open-source alternative Matomo, which I have installed at the domain **analytics.stuartmcmillen.com** - this analytics page is one that only I, the webmaster, would ever need to analyse.

My website is **stuartmcmillen.com**, which features a number of comics.

I have purchased a number of other URLs, and I have used Cloudflare to redirect these URLs to the relevant page on my website. For example:

EnergySlaves.com redirects to https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/energy-slaves/
StMatthewIsland.com redirects to https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/st-matthew-island/
TownWithoutTelevision.com redirects to https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/topic/television/

(The reason I have these URLs is so that it is easy for people to read the URLs on a piece of paper and type them into their web browser, rather than typing out the full URL).

I have just noticed that some of my URL redirections are no longer working correctly:

RatPark.com is no longer redirecting to https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/
PeakOilComic.com is no longer redirecting to http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/peak-oil/
SupernormalStimuli.com is no longer redirecting to http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/supernormal-stimuli/

All of these domains are now mistakenly trying to point to my **analytics.**stuartmcmillen.com subdomain, rahter than the usual **www.**stuartmcmillen.com

Can anyone suggest why this is happening for these specific URLs and not the others, despite my Cloudflare Page Rule settings seemingly being identical to the Rules of the working sites.

Is there some sort of ‘best practice’ that I am overlooking here?

[sdayman]

http://ratpark.com redirects.
https://ratpark.com does not.

If you posted screenshots of your redirect rules, we’ll be able to advise you on what needs to change.

[stuart9]

@sdayman

http://ratpark.com redirects.
https://ratpark.com does not.

That’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed the difference between the two versions of that URL. I have ** HTTPS-Only Mode** in Firefox activated, so I am blocked from seeing HTTP versions of websites (unless I override the rule). Though I am also getting the error in Chrome browser…

Here is a screenshot of my (working) page rules for EnergySlaves.com:

[stuart9]

And here is a screenshot of my (not working) page rules for RatPark.com:

Already, I see that the top rule specifies the ‘http’ at the front of the string. Should I simply omit that?

Any other ‘best practices’ that I should follow with these redirects?

[sdayman]

Make those rules *example.com/* and it will match everything with just the one rule, regardless of http/https or www/not-www.

Redirecting One Domain to Another

This tutorial covers redirecting one domain to another. For this, we will be redirecting domainA.com to domainB.com. The following settings need to be configured under the domain you are redirecting from, in this example, this is domainA.com Step 1, The DNS Record: The first thing you will need is a DNS record for @, www and any other subdomains you want to redirect, set to . This can point to any IP address as the redirection page rule will execute first. I would recommend pointing…

[stuart9]

Perfect answer! Thanks for solving that for me.

I’ve been using Cloudflare for many years, and it seems as though I’ve been unknowingly perpetuating bad practices with my redirect rules. Good to simplify it down to just one, using the *example.com/* template.