Redirects with Nginx

Nginx is a widely used web server, especially for VPS hosting and modern architectures. Redirects are configured directly in its configuration files (usually in /etc/nginx/sites-available/), inside server or location blocks.

After each change, reload the configuration: sudo nginx -s reload

301 (permanent) redirect with Nginx

Redirect a specific page:

location = /old-page.html {
    return 301 https://www.example.net/new-page.html;
}

Redirect an entire directory:

location /old-directory/ {
    return 301 https://www.example.net/new-directory/;
}

Force HTTPS (HTTP → HTTPS):

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.net www.example.net;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

Force www (non-www → www):

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name example.net;
    return 301 https://www.example.net$request_uri;
}

Remove www (www → non-www):

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name www.example.net;
    return 301 https://example.net$request_uri;
}

302 (temporary) redirect with Nginx

Redirect a page:

location = /old-page.html {
    return 302 https://www.example.net/new-page.html;
}

Temporarily redirect an entire domain:

server {
    server_name example.net;
    return 302 https://www.example.net$request_uri;
}

Redirect with rewrite (regular expressions)

For more complex cases, the rewrite directive accepts regular expressions:

Permanent redirect (301):

rewrite ^/old-page/(.*)$ /new-page/$1 permanent;

Temporary redirect (302):

rewrite ^/old-page/(.*)$ /new-page/$1 redirect;

permanent corresponds to a 301 code, redirect corresponds to a 302 code.