How to URL redirect a PDF

Report · Jan 04, 2013

Hi,

I have rebuilt a website and added 301 redirects to for all the old pages. On the traffic report I also noticed that a PDF has a lot of link backs and would like to redirect that URL as well.

The old url I want to redirect is: http://www.vits.com.au/documents/countriesandlanguagesspoken_000.pdf

It should be redirected to the homepage: http://www.vits.com.au

Using a 301 Redirect doesn't work for the .pdf extension and as far as I am aware I don't have access to the .htaccess file in BC websites.

I have also tried creating the a folder named 'countriesandlanguagesspoken_000.pdf' and put an index.html file in it, which I tried to redirect through the 301 URL Redirect screen in the Admin Panel. This works only if the URL has a forwardslash behind it (http://www.vits.com.au/documents/countriesandlanguagesspoken_000.pdf/), which I suppose makes sense.

I have googled and found some options which involve PHP or ASP files, but it appears that uploading ASP files through FTP doesn't work at all.

Does anyone have a suggestions how I could get the URL redirect to work?

Many thanks,

Jerun

Report · Jan 04, 2013

There is not htaccess file, it a .net system.

You need to go to the URL directors manager under pages, download the spreadsheet and set up your redirects. I do this for PDF to a page all time and its fine.

Report · Jan 07, 2013

Thanks Liam,

I have tried getting it to work via the URL manager (manually as well as via the import spreadsheet), but unfortunately it still doesn't work.

To test I have set up two redirects, one with a PDF extension and one with .html. The HTML one works, the PDF one doesnt.

This doesn't work:

Old URL: /downloads/languages.pdf

New URL: /we-speak-your-language

This works:

Old URL: /downloads/languages.html

New URL: /we-speak-your-language

The full URL for the PDF that should be redirected is http://www.vits.com.au/downloads/languages.pdf. This should redirect to http://www.vits.com.au/we-speak-your-language

As you can see I have uploaded a sample PDF to the location (http://www.vits.com.au/downloads/languages.pdf). If I don't I just get a 404 error.

I have also tried redirecting a PDF directly in the root directory (http://www.vits.com.au/languages.pdf) but that didn't work either.

Please let me know if you have any further suggestions.

Many thanks

Jerun

Report · Jan 07, 2013

If the file exists it wont redirect.

The file still exists.

Report · Jan 08, 2013

Just deleted the file and still doesn't work. tried leaving the 'downloads' folder there, removing it. It just gives me a 404 now.

Report · Jan 20, 2013

Hi. just wondering if anyone has any suggestions to my problem.

I have redirected both URLs below and as you will see the .html works fine and .pdf does not:

http://www.vits.com.au/downloads/languages.html

http://www.vits.com.au/downloads/languages.pdf

I've tried a lot of things but can't get it to work.

Cheers

Jerun

Report · May 09, 2013

I am having this same issue. We are about to change our current site to a BC site and have literature printed with url's to PDF's and we will need to redirect those. Any more information on this would be greatly appreciated!

All the Best,

Melody

Report · Nov 09, 2013

Hi,

I am having the same problem - I have changed the names of some pdf files and now I am getting 404 errors on Google webmaster. I tried to use the URL redirect but it doesn't work for pdfs. Can someone please advise how to resolve this issue?

Thanks,

Tammy

Report · Nov 26, 2013

Hi Jerun and all,

Unfortunately, you cannot create redirects from pdf files to regular HTML files or to other pdf links. Therefore, the only suggestion would be to leave the old files on the old server, or copy them to the new one and make sure that the URL to them is the same.

We're sorry that we don't have a better solution at this point, but this is how the system has been designed to work - so I'll document this as a feature request.

Thanks and regards,
Florin

Report · Nov 25, 2013

Any news on this item? I'm experiencing the same issue.

It would be great to get an answer on this, because it's a bit strange that the discussion is now dead, while there is not a solution yet!

Thanks

Report · Nov 25, 2013

No I didn’t get a solution either so I found I had to leave the old file on the server as well but changed the links on the site to the new file.

While not a good solution it did get rid of the 404s.

Cheers,

Tammy

Report · Nov 25, 2013

I have not had any resolution to this issue since posting........ we did the same, brought over the files from our previous server, so that any printed materials with the downloaded url could still be accessed..... very disapointed that there has been no real help on this issue.

Melody

Report · Nov 25, 2013

I think there are alot more urgent issues at present since the migration to Amazon.