Create redirects for GitLab Pages

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In GitLab Pages, you can configure rules to forward one URL to another using Netlify style HTTP redirects.

Supported features

GitLab Pages only supports the _redirects plain text file syntax, and .toml files are not supported.

Redirects are only supported at a basic level. GitLab Pages doesn’t support all special options offered by Netlify.

Note that supported paths must start with a forward slash /.

Feature Supported Example
Redirects (301, 302) Yes /wardrobe.html /narnia.html 302
Rewrites (other status codes) No /en/* /en/404.html 404
Splats No /news/* /blog/:splat
Placeholders No /news/:year/:month/:date/:slug /blog/:year/:month/:date/:slug
Query parameters No /store id=:id /blog/:id 301
Force (shadowing) No /app/ /app/index.html 200!
Domain-level redirects No http://blog.example.com/* https://www.example.com/blog/:splat 301
Redirect by country or language No / /anz 302 Country=au,nz
Redirect by role No /admin/* 200! Role=admin

Create redirects

To create redirects, create a configuration file named _redirects in the public/ directory of your GitLab Pages site.

If your GitLab Pages site uses the default domain name (such as namespace.gitlab.io/projectname) you must prefix every rule with the project name: 

/projectname/redirect-portal.html /projectname/magic-land.html 301
/projectname/cake-portal.html /projectname/still-alive.html 302
/projectname/wardrobe.html /projectname/narnia.html 302
/projectname/pit.html /projectname/spikes.html 302

If your GitLab Pages site uses custom domains, no project name prefix is needed. For example, if your custom domain is example.com, your _redirect file would look like: 

/redirect-portal.html /magic-land.html 301
/cake-portal.html /still-alive.html 302
/wardrobe.html /narnia.html 302
/pit.html /spikes.html 302

Files override redirects

Files take priority over redirects. If a file exists on disk, GitLab Pages serves the file instead of your redirect. For example, if the files hello.html and world.html exist, and the _redirects file contains the following line, the redirect is ignored because hello.html exists: 

/projectname/hello.html /projectname/world.html 302

GitLab doesn’t support Netlify’s force option to change this behavior.

Debug redirect rules

If a redirect isn’t working as expected, or you want to check your redirect syntax, visit https://[namespace.gitlab.io]/projectname/_redirects, replacing [namespace.gitlab.io] with your domain name. The _redirects file isn’t served directly, but your browser displays a numbered list of your redirect rules, and whether the rule is valid or invalid: 

11 rules
rule 1: valid
rule 2: valid
rule 3: error: splats are not supported
rule 4: valid
rule 5: error: placeholders are not supported
rule 6: valid
rule 7: error: no domain-level redirects to outside sites
rule 8: error: url path must start with forward slash /
rule 9: error: no domain-level redirects to outside sites
rule 10: valid
rule 11: valid

Disable redirects

Redirects in GitLab Pages is under development, and is deployed behind a feature flag that is enabled by default.

To disable redirects, for Omnibus installations, define the FF_ENABLE_REDIRECTS environment variable in the global settings. Add the following line to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and reconfigure the instance. 

gitlab_pages['env']['FF_ENABLE_REDIRECTS'] = 'false'

For source installations, define the FF_ENABLE_REDIRECTS environment variable, then restart GitLab: 

export FF_ENABLE_REDIRECTS="false"
/path/to/pages/bin/gitlab-pages -config gitlab-pages.conf