"Hello Rachel… I think we have a problem… Google is listing the wrong pages."
Sadly I’d heard it before.
And sure enough, when I took a look at the site I was right. The client had been busy renaming blog articles, changing menu items all for better SEO rankings. The idea was right, but nobody had told Google.
The old URLs were still out there, sitting in search results, leading visitors straight into a 404.
And sadly it wouldn't be the last time this would happen.
14 Joomlers, One Room, Big Ideas
Then, in September 2026 came the Production sprint - For those unfamiliar: it's a hands-on event where Joomla contributors from around the world come together in one place to shape the future of the platform. No distractions, just ideas and people who care. We came up with a list of features we’d like to add by Joomla version 8. The featured varied from building a MCP server for use of AI to automated workflows and intelligent module assignment. (the whole list can be found here: https://developer.joomla.org/features.html)
While we were talking about what would make Joomla even better, the redirection problems came to mind. It felt like the kind of problem users should get help with from the CMS, since they didn’t even know that they were missing a step.
My initial solution was simple: If a user changes an alias, show a message that tells them that what they are about to do might affect the URL structure and therefore lead to 404 errors. And that they can prevent this by creating a redirect.
How a Simple Message Became Full Automation
Benjamin Trenkle was the developer that took up the challenge and together we set out to solving the problem.
We started with building the messaging whenever an alias was changed for an article or category that didn’t have a menu-item directly pointing at it. Benjamin did the heavy lifting. I was his sounding board.
But a mere message with a link to a blank new redirect seemed a bit simple. So we made sure the old and new URLs were prefilled into the new redirect. All the user had to do is hit save.
Then the question arose why would you even let the user hit save. Why not create the redirect automatically and tell the user what you did? So the automation was built in.
The result: a fully automated redirection creating plugin.
The Plugin in Action
When a user changes a menu-item alias a redirect is made from the old to the new URL. The same goes for articles and categories that have no direct menu-item attached to them. A message is shown confirming a redirect has been created.
In the plugin you can set whether you want to use this feature, create the redirects manually of automate the whole process.
In the menu or content component you can set it to run on backend, frontend or both.
Perfect for Client Handovers
During the build of a site you can leave it off. So you won’t get a bunch of useless redirects because you’re still naming and renaming items.
When you hand over a project to a customer that has access to creating and changing menu-items, categories and/or articles you can turn on the automated creation of the redirects so you never get that call about the 404’s again.
From Sprint to Solution
I’d like to say thank you to Benjamin Trenkle for making this idea into a working feature, Harald Leithner for conceptional help and to all other people who were involved.
The new redirect plugin will be a part of Joomla 6.2.