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  1. Products
  2. Rules
  3. ...
  4. How to
  5. URL forwarding

URL forwarding or redirects

Page Rules allow you to forward or redirect traffic to a different URL, though they are just one of the options provided by Cloudflare.

​​ Redirect with Page Rules

To configure URL forwarding or redirects using Page Rules:

  1. Log in to your Cloudflare account, and select your account and domain.
  2. Go to Rules > Page Rules.
  3. Under Page Rules, select Create Page Rule.
  4. Under If the URL matches, enter the URL or URL pattern that should match the rule. 
  5. In Pick a Setting, choose Forwarding URL from the drop-down menu.
  6. For Select status code, choose 301 - Permanent Redirect or 302 - Temporary Redirect.
  7. Enter the destination URL.
  8. Select Save and Deploy Page Rule.

​​ Forwarding examples

Imagine you want site visitors to reach your website for a variety of URL patterns. For instance, the page rule URL patterns *www.example.com/products and *example.com/products match:

http://example.com/products


http://www.example.com/products


https://www.example.com/products


https://blog.example.com/products


https://www.blog.example.com/products

but do not match:

http://www.example.com/blog/products (extra directory)
or
http://www.example.comproducts (no trailing slash)

Once you have created the pattern that matches what you want, select the Forwarding toggle. This will display a field where you can enter the address you want requests forwarded to.

https://example.com/products

If you enter the address above in the forwarding box and select Add Rule, within a few seconds any requests that match the pattern you entered will automatically be forwarded with an HTTP 302 redirect status code to the new URL.

​​ Advanced forwarding options

If you use a basic redirect, such as forwarding the apex domain (example.com) to www.example.com, then you lose anything else in the URL.

For example, you could set up the pattern:

example.com

And have it forward to:

http://www.example.com

However, if someone entered example.com/some-particular-page.html, they would be redirected to:

www.example.com

Instead of:

www.example.com/some-particular-page.html

The solution is to use variables. Each wildcard corresponds to a variable when can be referenced in the forwarding address. The variables are represented by a $ (dollar sign) followed by a number. To refer to the first wildcard you would use $1, to refer to the second wildcard you would use $2, and so on.

To fix the forwarding from the apex to www in the above example, you could use the same pattern:

example.com/*

You would then set up the following URL for traffic to forward to:

http://www.example.com/$1

In this case, if someone went to:

example.com/some-particular-page.html

They would be redirected to:

http://www.example.com/some-particular-page.html