Learn how to set up URL forwarding or redirects with Cloudflare.

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Overview

If you want to forward or redirect traffic to a different URL, you have two options using Cloudflare:

• Bulk Redirects (recommended): Should be used for most use cases due to ease of use, maintenance, and cost.
• Page Rules: Should only be used when Bulk Redirects do not meet your use case.

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Redirect with Page Rules

To configure URL forwarding or redirects using Page Rules:

1. Log into your Cloudflare account.
2. Click the appropriate Cloudflare account for the domain where you want to add URL forwarding.
3. Go to Rules > Page Rules.
4. Under Page Rules, click Create Page Rule. The Create Page Rule for <your domain> dialog opens.
5. Under If the URL matches, enter the URL or URL pattern that should match the rule. 
6. In Pick a Setting, choose Forwarding URL from the drop-down menu.
7. For Select status code, choose 301 (Permanent Redirect) or 302 (Temporary Redirect).
8. Enter the destination URL.
9. To finish, click Save and Deploy.

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Forwarding examples

Imagine you want site visitors to easily reach your website for a variety of URL patterns.  For instance, the Page Rule URL patterns *www.example.com/products and *example.com/products match:

 http://example.com/products

 http://www.example.com/products

 https://www.example.com/products

 https://blog.example.com/products

 https://www.blog.example.com/products

but do not match:

http://www.example.com/blog/products (extra directory before the +)  
or
http://www.example.comproducts (no trailing slash)

Once you have created the pattern that matches what you want, click the Forwarding toggle. That exposes a field where you can enter the address I want requests forwarded to.

https://example.com/products

If I enter the address above in the forwarding box and click Add Rule, within a few seconds any requests that match the pattern I entered will automatically be forwarded with a 302 Redirect to the new URL.

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Advanced forwarding options

If you use a basic redirect, such as forwarding the root domain to www.example.com, then you lose anything else in the URL.

For example, you could set up the pattern:\

example.com

And have it forward to:

http://www.example.com

However, if someone entered: example.com/some-particular-page.html They would be redirected to:

www.example.com

Instead of:

www.example.com/some-particular-page.html

The solution is to use variables. Each wildcard corresponds to a variable when can be referenced in the forwarding address. The variables are represented by a $ followed by a number. To refer to the first wildcard you'd use $1, to refer to the second wildcard you'd use $2, and so on.

To fix the forwarding from the root to www in the above example, you could use the same pattern:

example.com/*

You'd then set up the following URL for traffic to forward to:

http://www.example.com/$1

In this case, if someone went to:

example.com/some-particular-page.html

They'd be redirected to:

 http://www.example.com/some-particular-page.html

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Related resources

• Bulk redirects
• Understanding and Configuring Cloudflare Page Rules (Page Rules Tutorial)