Regular expression (regex) redirects provide the most powerful and flexible way to redirect URLs based on complex patterns. Regex allows you to match specific portions of URLs, capture those segments, and reuse them in the destination URL. This advanced technique is essential for complex site migrations and sophisticated redirect scenarios.
Shopify's native redirect manager does not support regex patterns. You need a specialized app like Doc 404 to implement regex-based redirects in your store.
Understanding Regex Redirect Syntax
A regex redirect uses special characters and patterns to match URL structures. The caret symbol (^) indicates the start of a URL path. Square brackets with ranges like [0-9] match any single digit, while curly braces {4} specify how many times a pattern should repeat.
Parentheses create capture groups that save matched portions of the URL. These captured segments can be referenced in the destination URL using placeholders like $1, $2, or $3, corresponding to the first, second, and third capture groups.
For example, a regex pattern like ^/blog/[0-9]{4}/[0-9]{2}/[0-9]{2}/(.*) matches blog URLs with a date structure like /blog/2024/10/25/article-title. The parentheses around (.*) capture the article title, which can be reused in the new URL as $1.
Common Regex Redirect Use Cases
Migrating from platforms with date-based URLs requires regex redirects. If your old blog structure included year/month/day in every URL and your Shopify blog uses simpler paths, a single regex rule converts all posts. The pattern ^/blog/[0-9]{4}/[0-9]{2}/[0-9]{2}/(.*) redirecting to /blogs/news/$1 preserves the article identifier while removing the date structure.
Changing product URL structures benefits from regex when the old format included additional categorization. If products were organized as /product-details/category/subcategory/product-name and your Shopify structure is simply /products/product-name, the regex can extract just the product name and create clean redirects.
Multi-language sites undergoing restructuring use regex to redirect entire language sections. A pattern like ^/fr/(.+) redirecting to /en/$1 would convert all French URLs to English equivalents, maintaining the page identifiers while changing the language prefix.
Complex query parameter handling is possible with regular expressions. When old URLs include parameters that need to be converted to Shopify's URL structure, regex patterns can identify and transform these parameters into clean, SEO-friendly paths.
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