Writerside Help

Redirect to other content

When you remove or rename a topic, your readers might encounter the 404 error page when opening a previously published URL. To avoid this, Writerside suggests adding redirects from the previous web file name to another topic.

Redirection rules are stored in the redirection-rules.xml file and have the following syntax:

<rule id="36921bf6"> <description>Created after removal of "Introduction" from Writerside</description> <accepts>introduction.html</accepts> </rule>

The accepts-web-file-names-ref attribute on a <toc-element> ensures that all applicable web file names from the corresponding redirection rule will be redirected to this entry in the table of contents:

<toc-element topic="getting-started.topic" accepts-web-file-names-ref="36921bf6"/>

In the previous example, all links to introduction.html will redirect to the web file generated from getting-started.topic.

Add redirect manually

  1. Open the tree file and locate the <toc-element> that should serve as the new target.

  2. Add the accepts-web-file-names attribute to this <toc-element> and specify the HTML file name from which to redirect.

    <toc-element topic="new-topic.topic" accepts-web-file-names="old-topic.html"/>

    If you want to redirect multiple web file names to this <toc-element>, separate them with commas, or manually create a redirection rule and reference it from the tree file to avoid cluttering it with a long list of web filenames.

Redirect to an external URL

If the relevant content is available outside of your documentation, you can add a redirect to an external URL. For example, if you removed a topic and moved the content to a blog post, a knowledge base article, or a page in your learning center. Or maybe some feature was removed, and it is available in another product, then you can redirect to the relevant documentation page of that product.

  • Add the target-for-accepts-web-file-names attribute to a <toc-element> without an associated topic and make it hidden so that your readers do not see in the TOC.

    <toc-element toc-title="Redirect to blog post" hidden="true" accepts-web-file-names="cool-feature.html" target-for-accept-web-file-names="https://my.company.com/blog/about-cool-feature"/>

    In the previous example, readers with a link to cool-feature.html in your documentation will be redirected to the relevant post in your company's blog.

Last modified: 13 June 2024