HTTP Redirects

URL redirection also known as URL forwarding

is a technique to give more than one URL address to a page, a form, a whole website, or a web application. HTTP has a special kind of response, called a HTTP redirect, for this operation.

eg; What you see when twitter.com redirects to x.com is referred to in backend/software engineering as a URL redirection.

Redirects accomplish numerous goals:

• Temporary redirects during site maintenance or downtime

• Permanent redirects to preserve existing links/bookmarks after changing the site's URLs, progress pages when uploading a file, etc.

  In HTTP, redirection is triggered by a server sending a special redirect response to a request. Redirect responses have status codes that start with 3, and a Location header holding the URL to redirect to.

Alternative way of specifying redirections

HTTP redirects aren't the only way to define redirections. There are two others:

1. HTML redirections with the <meta> element

2. JavaScript redirections via the DOM

Why It Matters;

• For SEO: A 301 tells search engines to transfer SEO rankings, eg from twitter.com to x.com.

• For User Experience: Ensures users who type the old domain still reach the new site.

• For Brand Migration: Reflects Twitter's rebranding to "X".

Also check;https://www.clickssl.net/blog/redirect-http-to-https