Redirect Process

AVEVA should adhere to the following process regarding the short-term and long-term management of redirects.

Effective in 2023, new permanent redirects are created in-house in Akamai rather than through the vendor in AEM Dispatcher.

In Summer 2023, all redirects in AEM Dispatcher were moved to Akamai. 

CMS publishers are discouraged from creating temporary redirects in AEM and are encouraged to request new permanent redirects. Ideally, new permanent redirects will be set up once a week on Thursdays.

Short-Term Redirects

Short-term redirects in AEM pages are strongly discouraged; however, they may be created within AEM pages for only a short period of time, meaning only until the long-term, permanent redirects can be implemented within Akamai.

In Sites

In Language Masters

Redirect Due to a URL Change

No action is needed in Language Masters for a temporary redirect, but action will be needed once the permanent redirect goes live.

Redirect Due to Page Retirement

In Page Properties > Basic tab, edit the following:

  • Edit the backend Title of the page to include "REDIRECT -" at the beginning. This naming convention lets other CMS Authors know that this page is now being redirected and is not currently active.

In Page Properties > Site Configuration tab, edit the following:

  • Mark the page as "No Index" to remove the page from the sitemap.xml
  • Check "Hide Page From Coveo Internal Search" to remove the page from all Coveo search pages and Card Carousels using Dynamic Tag option (need to confirm what happens when using Dynamic URLs)
  • Check "Hide from Sitemap Webpage" to remove the page from the sitemap web page

Roll the page out to Prod.

Please note: If you are redirecting a page in the EN site, assess whether the same type of redirect also needs to be implemented within the international sites.

In Live Copy

In Page Properties > Basic tab, edit the following:

  • Break inheritance for the Title field
    • Edit the backend Title of the page to include "REDIRECT -" at the beginning. This naming convention lets other CMS Authors know that this page is now being redirected and is not currently active.
  • Break inheritance for the Tag field
    • Remove any tags that should no longer be associated to the page

In Page Properties > Advanced tab, edit the following:

  • Select redirect type (301, 302); assumption is that most will be 301 for permanent redirect
  • Enter URL in field if redirect goes to a third party URL, or browse for an AEM page

In Page Properties > Site Configuration tab, edit the following, if this information has not been inherited from the language-master page:

  • Mark the page as "No Index" to remove the page from the sitemap.xml
  • Check "Hide Page From Coveo Internal Search" to remove the page from all Coveo search pages and Card Carousels using Dynamic Tag option (need to confirm what happens when using Dynamic URLs)
  • Check "Hide from Sitemap Webpage" to remove the page from the sitemap web page

Publish the page. Please note that temporary redirects will be functional only if they are created within the Live Copy version of the page.

Please note: If you are redirecting a page in the EN site, assess whether the same type of redirect also needs to be implemented within the international sites.

In Tags

Redirect Due to URL Change

No action is needed in Language Masters for a temporary redirect, but action will be needed once the permanent redirect goes live.

Redirect Due to Page Retirement

Find the tag that corresponds to the page to be redirected or retired, and do the following:

  • Determine if the tag needs to be deleted
  • Determine if the tag title and/or tag path needs to be modified/edited to reflect a new tag title and/or tag path (i.e., the tag move process)
  • Determine if the tag needs to be merged with an existing tag

Refer to Tag Management for tag authoring guidelines.

Long-Term Redirects

Long-term, permanent redirects are created in Akamai by the Web Team. These permanent redirects cannot be created/edited/deleted by CMS Authors because CMS Authors do not have access to Akamai.

AVEVA should track all new redirects needed within one spreadsheet that is attached to a Wrike ticket that gets created for each Thursday's redirect implementation.

Prior to the redirects being created in Akamai, do the following:

In Sites

Redirect Due to a URL Change

  • Remove the temporary redirect, if applicable, from the Page Properties > Advanced tab in both language-masters and Live Copy to avoid any conflicts with the redirects in Akamai and to prevent performance issues on the website
    • Not removing temporary redirects in Page Properties will result in a "too many redirects" error message for the pages that have the temporary redirects. 
      (Is this still true now that redirects are in Akamia instead of AEM Dispatcher?)
  • "Move" the page in both language-masters and Live Copy to edit the URL to the new location

Redirect Due to Page Retirement

Follow the Unpublishing process.

In Tags

Find the tag that corresponds to the page to be redirected or retired, and do the following:

  • Determine if the tag needs to be deleted
  • Determine if the tag title and/or tag path needs to be modified/edited to reflect a new tag title and/or tag path (i.e., the tag move process)
  • Determine if the tag needs to be merged with an existing tag

Refer to Tag Management for tag authoring guidelines.