Best Solution for redirects if you have to move templates / URL structure

Question

If you have to change your url-structure (and therefore in ee-templates) from let's say «opinion/detail/url_title» to «blog/article/url_title» — What's the best solution (EE-functionality, htaccess-stuff or something else) to redirect a visitor to the new url so users clicking on old links get redirected to the corresponding entry-template with the new tempalte-group/template structure?

for example:

domain.com/opinion/detail/My-Entry get's automaticly redirected to domain.com/blog/article/My-Entry?

Answer 1

If you've actually changed the template_group/template structure in EE and you just want to catch old requests and ensure they go to the new location then I'd always look to keep it top-level with .htaccess for this.

First of all ensure that the mod_rewrite module is enabled and the rewrite engine is enabled:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

Then using the RedirectMatch (for pattern matching rather than direct file matching) we create a permanent redirect (301) from the old URL schema to the new one:

RedirectMatch 301 /opinion/detail(.*) http://domain.com/blog/article/$1

Provided your new template structure in EE reflects the new schema that should work fine.

Answer 2

If you're not opposed to an add-on, I used Detour Pro on a site with many many URL reroutes and loved it. You can use wildcards with it to save time as well.