Help:Redirect

This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts H:R H:REDIR

A redirect is a page created so that navigation to a given title takes the reader directly to a different page. A redirect is created using the syntax:

#REDIRECT [[Target]]

...where "target" is the name of the target page. It is also possible to add a

#REDIRECT [[Target#Section header]]

The pound/number/hash sign (#) is also used to link to

Usually,

A page is treated as a redirect page if its

Note that a redirect works as intended (takes the reader directly to the target page) only if the link is to an existing normal page (not a special page) on the same project (English Wikipedia). In other cases soft redirects are often used – see below.

Examples:

• #REDIRECT [[France]] (redirects to the France article)
• #REDIRECT [[France#History]] (redirects to the "History" section of the France article)
• #REDIRECT [[fr:France]] (appears as a redirect to the France article on French Wikipedia, but does not work as a true redirect)

Any text appearing after the redirect link is ignored in the display, but may be used to add categories, interwiki links, comments, etc.

Note that the redirect link must be explicit – it cannot contain

When redirecting to a

If the redirect target is an existing page on English Wikipedia and a reader navigates to the redirect page – by

Transport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   (Redirected from Transportation)

To go to the redirect page itself (to edit it, view its history, etc.), click the link in the "(Redirected from...)" notice.

If the redirect target is a non-existing page (

A redirect page viewed directly, either in the situations described above, or when the URL used to access the page contains the query parameter redirect=no, looks like this:

Transportation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Redirect page

Transport

(See the actual Transportation redirect page.)

Redirects to articles that begin with a lowercase title, for example the redirect from the page at Ebay.com to the article at eBay, will display the target page with a capitalized first letter, even though the article displays the title with a lowercase title. This is because the true title of the target page is actually capitalized — it just appears lowercase because of the use of the magic word DISPLAYTITLE. (Usually, the template {{Lowercase title}} is used to implement the DISPLAYTITLE magic word for lowercase titles.)

Section redirects

When the redirect target is a

Redirects are usually created because readers may search for an article under different names (or editors may wish to link to it from different names). Examples are:

• Alternative names for the same thing
• Alternative spellings, capitalizations, etc. (although it is not necessary to create redirects from different capitalizations just because readers may enter them in the search box - the Go button in the Monobook skin resolves this automatically)
• Common misspellings
• Plurals
• Subtopics that don't have their own article (in this case, you may redirect to a section of the target page)
• WP:AFD
  )
• Redirects that keep links to a page active after it has been renamed (even if internal links are updated—this still applies for links from outside and links in edit summaries)

Note that it is not necessary to create redirects from every title an editor may conceivably wish to link to a given page –

Unregistered users, and those not yet autoconfirmed, can request a redirect be created at Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Redirects and categories. There is also a wizard that less experienced editors can use to create a redirect.

A redirect page can be created like any other page (see

Make sure that there is no text before the #REDIRECT keyword, or the redirect will not work. There is not usually any reason to place any text after the link either, although sometimes categories (or categorizing templates—see

Similarly, any existing page can be edited to turn it into a redirect.

To edit a page that is already a redirect (or to view its history, talk page, etc.), follow the redirect to the target page, then click on the link in the "(Redirected from ...)" notice at the top of the page. This takes you to the redirect page itself. (The URL for accessing a redirect page without following the redirect contains the query parameter redirect=no.)

Another way to get to a redirect page is to go to the target page, and click "What links here" (in the toolbox on the left of the page). This will show you all the backlinks to that page, including redirects. Clicking on a redirect in this list will take you to the redirect page, not the target.

The edit summary box can be left blank; the summary will then be automatically generated stating that the page has been redirected to the given target. (This applies for: a new redirect page; an existing article page turned into a redirect page; and a change to the target of an existing redirect.) The generated summary is overridden if the editor supplies their own summary.

Using VisualEditor

To create a redirect using the VisualEditor:

1. Open the "page options" menu (icon with three parallel horizontal bars) at the top right of the editor
2. Select "Page settings"
3. Check the box marked "Redirect this page to"
4. Enter the name of the target page in the text box below the checkbox
5. Click on the blue "Apply changes" button
6. Save the page. You may enter an edit summary, or an automatic summary will be generated.

With Template

For redirecting xyz to article abc, enter xyz here, and type #REDIRECT [[abc]] in the body.

As an alternative to the normal "hard" redirects (which take the reader directly to the target page), it is possible to create "soft" redirects, which leave the reader on the redirect page, giving them the option of clicking the link to the target page. This is usually done in the following situations:

• When the target is on another project (
  Meta, other language Wikipedias, etc.) or is a special page
  . (In these situations a hard redirect would behave as a soft one in any case.)
• For redirects between categories. (Hard redirects work for category pages, but soft ones are preferred because of the software's inability to recategorize pages from redirected categories.)

Soft redirects are created using the templates {{soft redirect}} and {{category redirect}}.

This page is referenced in the Wikipedia Glossary.

• Category:Redirect templates
• examples
  for page hatnotes
• Redirect technical help at Meta-Wiki
• Wikipedia:Printability
• Wikipedia:Template messages/Redirect pages
• WikiProject Redirect's style guide
• Wikipedia:Visualizing redirects, for how to make links to redirects stand out (based on the mw-redirect CSS class)