Guide Control Panel

How to add a redirect without editing files

Sending visitors from one URL to another using your control panel's redirect tool instead of editing a file.

iFastHosting Support Team Updated 26 August 2026 5 min read Beginner

A redirect sends a visitor who requests one URL straight to a different one instead. It is the standard way to handle a page that has moved, a URL structure that has changed, or an old domain that should now point at a new one — and most control panels include a redirect tool that handles it without needing to write or edit a configuration file yourself.

Why use the control panel tool instead of .htaccess

Redirects can also be written directly into an .htaccess file, and that route gives you more flexibility for complex patterns. But for the common cases — one URL to another, or a whole domain to another domain — the control panel's own redirect tool is simpler and harder to get wrong, since it builds the correct underlying rule for you rather than asking you to write it by hand. Reach for .htaccess directly only once you need something the tool cannot express, such as a pattern-based rule affecting many URLs at once.

Types of redirect

Type	Meaning	Use it for
301 — Permanent	Tells browsers and search engines the move is permanent	A page or domain that has moved for good. Search engines transfer ranking signal to the new address over time.
302 — Temporary	Tells browsers and search engines the move is temporary	A short-term redirect — maintenance, a temporary campaign page — where the old address should stay indexed as the real one.

Using a 302 for something genuinely permanent, or vice versa, does not break the redirect itself, but it does send the wrong signal to search engines about which address to treat as authoritative — worth getting right rather than defaulting to whichever option happens to be first in the list.

Setting one up

Open the section of your control panel dealing with redirects. You will generally be asked for:

The source — the existing URL or path that should redirect. This might be a specific page, a whole folder, or the domain root.
The destination — the full URL visitors should land on instead.
The type — permanent (301) or temporary (302).

Whole-domain versus single-page options may be separate

Some panels handle "redirect this whole domain to that one" as a distinct option from "redirect this one path to that one," rather than a single unified tool. If you are trying to redirect an entire domain and only see a field for a single path, look for a separate domain-level redirect option nearby.

Testing it

Open a fresh private or incognito browser window — not a tab you already have the old page loaded in, since cached results can make a broken redirect look like it is working — and visit the old URL. It should land you on the new address within a second or so. If it does not redirect at all, double-check the source URL was entered exactly, including any trailing slash, since a mismatch there is a common reason a redirect appears to silently do nothing.

Common uses

A page that moved. Redirecting the old URL to the new one keeps existing links and bookmarks working instead of dead-ending in a 404.
Consolidating www and non-www. Redirecting one version of your domain to the other ensures visitors and search engines settle on a single, consistent address rather than treating both as separate sites.
Retiring an old domain. If you have moved a site to a new domain entirely, redirecting the old one preserves both existing traffic and any accumulated search ranking, rather than losing it outright when the old domain goes quiet.
A temporary campaign or maintenance page. A 302 sends visitors somewhere else for now, without telling search engines to treat that "somewhere else" as the permanent home of the content.

Avoid chaining redirects

A redirect that points to another redirect, which points to a third, adds delay for the visitor and can confuse search engines about which URL is actually authoritative. Where possible, point every redirect straight at its final destination rather than at another redirect in the chain.

If a redirect does not seem to work

Browser cache. A 301 redirect is explicitly permanent, and browsers cache that aggressively — a private window rules this out as the cause.
An existing .htaccess rule conflicting with it. If the site already has redirect rules written directly into .htaccess, a new rule added through the control panel tool can sit alongside — and sometimes conflict with — the existing ones. Check .htaccess if a control-panel redirect behaves unexpectedly.
A trailing slash mismatch. /old-page and /old-page/ can be treated as different sources depending on how the redirect was entered.

For redirect logic more complex than a single source and destination — pattern matching, conditional rules, redirecting based on part of a URL — see how to use .htaccess and ten .htaccess rules worth knowing.