The solutions contained within this article may affect Google search rankings since they contain Javascript redirects. For this reason, they may not be suitable for long-term or large-scale deployment.
If you've deleted articles from your Help Center, you may have noticed that users occasionally still attempt to access the URLs associated with these articles. No matter the source of such traffic, you can automatically redirect users visiting these URLs to more useful pages.
This article includes several solutions that, in most cases, should help you redirect traffic:
- Redirecting a set of deleted articles to new article equivalents
- Redirecting untranslated articles to an existing language
- Redirecting all deleted articles to one specific page
- Generalizing or specifying which articles (or community posts) redirect to one specific page
Accessing Your Help Center's Custom JavaScript file
In order to implement any such solution, you must first access your Help Center's JavaScript file:
- Sign in to Zendesk Support as an administrator. Click the Zendesk Products icon (
) in the top bar, then select Guide.
- In the top right corner of Zendesk Guide select Guide Admin.
- Click the Customize design icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Click the theme you want to update to open it.
- Click the options menu (3 horizontal dots), then select Edit Code.
- Open the script.js file.
Example: Redirecting a set of deleted articles to new article equivalents
Here's an example in which a Help Center has a set of old, deleted pages, each of which corresponds to a new page to which we are redirecting.
Within the first few lines of the JS file, you will see a line reading:
$(document).ready(function() {
Insert the following code directly above that line:
var oldIds = ["217352077", "216552968"];
var newIds = ["216553098", "216552958"];
for (var i = 0; i < oldIds.length; i++){
if (window.location.href.indexOf( oldIds[i]) > -1) {
window.location.href = 'https://YOURSUBDOMAIN. zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/ ' + newIds[i];
}
}
You'll need to customize a few things about this script before you can save. Let's take a look at those below.
The first part of the code you'll edit is here:
var oldIds = ["217352077", "216552968"];
var newIds = ["216553098", "216552958"];
This is a list of the old article IDs and new article IDs. You are going to have to add your own article IDs here. In order to find an article ID, just view the article in your browser (or the URL from your analytics platform). The URL will look similar to this:
https://[YOURSUBDOMIAN].zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203664386-Help-Center-guide-for-agents-and-end-users
In this case, the article ID is "203664386".
In order to redirect properly with this solution, they must be at the same position within the array. So in this case, an article whose URL contains "217352077" will now redirect to "216553098". And an article containing "216552968" will now redirect to "216552958".
Be sure to keep these IDs wrapped in quotes, as seen above, and separated by a comma in each case. So if you added a new set of redirects, it would look like:
var oldIds = ["217352077", "216552968", "216552902"];
var newIds = ["216553098", "216552958", "216552944"];
Second, you will have to edit the URL in this line:
window.location.href = 'https://YOURSUBDOMAIN. zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/ ' + newIds[i];
Make sure that you use your subdomain, or alternately, use your entire Help Center URL as normally appears in your Help Center if it is white labeled to your own URL. Do not remove the end of the line, where it reads "+ newIds[i];". This is how the loop appends your new article ID to your URL. The code will fail without it.
Example: Redirecting untranslated articles to an existing language
Here's an example in which you have Help Center content in multiple languages. Let's say all of your contents exist in English, but only some of it exists in French and German. When a user tries to access those articles in French or German, they'll get an error page. This code allows redirects them away from the error page back to the existing English-language article:
var notDefaultLanguage = window.location.href.indexOf('/en-us/') == -1;
var isArticle = window.location.href.indexOf('/articles/') > -1;
var isErrorPage = $(".error-page").length > 0;
if ( isArticle && notDefaultLanguage && isErrorPage ) {
var newURL = window.location.href.replace(/(.*\/hc\/)([\w-]+)(\/.*)/, "$1en-us$3");
window.location.href = newURL;
}
In this example, there's only one bit of customization that needs to be done. If your default Help Center language isn't English, you can replace that language. In the code, you'll see "en-us" appear in two places:
var notDefaultLanguage = window.location.href.indexOf('/en-us/') == -1;
and
var newURL = window.location.href.replace(/(.*\/hc\/)([\w-]+)(\/.*)/, "$1en-us$3");
You'll replace "en-us" in these two lines with your default language code. Find your default language code in the URL for any of your main articles. For example, a URL for a French-language Help Center page will look like
https://[YOURSUBDOMAIN].zendesk.com/hc/fr/articles/214943538
with "fr" representing the country code.
Example: Redirecting all deleted articles to one specific page
Here's another example in which a Help Center redirects all deleted articles (note: not including community posts) to one specific article.
Within the first few lines of the JS file, you will see a line reading:
$(document).ready(function() {
In this case, insert the following code directly below that line. Important note, inserting above (as with the previous example) will not work for this example:
if ( window.location.href.indexOf('articles') > -1 && $(".not-found").length > 0 ) {
window.location.href = 'https://[YOURSUBDOMAIN].zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/216553068-error-redirect';
}
You'll need to customize the URL in this script before you can save. Make sure to replace it with the URL of the article you want your Help Center to redirect to.
This solution will only work if we make sure that a ".not-found" class exists in your error page. So let's add one.
On the grey bar where the "JS" link appears, click on the "Home Page" link. Find and select "Error page" in that dropdown. In the error page, you'll find an area starting with the code {{#is error 'not_found'}}
. It will look something like this:
{{#is error 'not_found'}}
<h2>{{t 'nonexistent_page'}}</h2>
<p>{{t 'mistyped_address_or_moved_page'}}</p>
{{/is}}
You will want to add a new class to the h2 element (or any element within the 'not_found' #is tags), so that it looks like this:
<h2 class="not-found">{{t 'nonexistent_page'}}</h2>
Now you have all the elements in place that you'll need for a general deleted article redirect.
Example: Generalizing or specifiying which articles (or community posts) redirect to one specific page
You can get more specific or general with this solution by customizing the if statement. For example, to redirect from any deleted article or community post, change the if statement to:
if ( $(".not-found").length > 0 )
Alternately, to only redirect deleted articles that have the word "buttermilk" in the title, change the if statement to:
if ( window.location.href.indexOf('buttermilk') > -1 && $(".not-found").length > 0 )
Unlike the first solution presented, these solutions will first breifly show the error page, then redirect to the new page. This is due to the fact that we are using JS to search for an element within the page, and in order to do that, we must first wait for the page to load.
62 Comments
+1
When deleting or unpublishing an article, it would be awesome if you could specify right then & there the new article that you want to redirect the old link to.
Really?!
Give us normal 30x redirect facilities for articles. How hard can that be? We're using two Help Centers, and I have to maintain two separate JS redirect banks on my HCs. Also, your JS code here is pretty bad. It doesn't allow for easy maintenance of the records you're updating, without refactoring it, because you have to try to match the redirects in the list in a 1:1 fashion. I had a developer at my company see what you had offered, and how upsetting maintaining just a dozen redirects turned into (bad, bad, bad jumble). In fact, here's the refactored code:
Provide a real facility for doing this. Redirects are a huge part of how Zendesk works, and the fact that it's not included in the feature suite, and that you've asked us to abandon this thread for the feedback forums, where there is no thread on this topic (I searched 25 pages before I couldn't take it anymore) -- I am utterly stunned that you're claiming this is too difficult to follow.
Perhaps you should put a product architect, instead of a product manager, on this problem. The fact that the article was published over 2 years ago, with the JS code to work around the redirect problem we have with this system, is inexcusable. It just needs to be fixed. An explanation is not necessary. A solution is, however. Don't even get me started on how hard it is to pull a list of all tags out for reporting. Some of the basic functions that ZD excludes makes for some serious sore spots, and that they've been unaddressed through a re-brand (over 14 months ago, btw), and are now being pushed around communities, baffles me.
I also noticed that you've deleted most of the comments in this thread, several of them belonging to me. This problem has been around FOREVER, and was addressed with this article beginning in 2014. I've saved this answer so I can repost it, should your delete finger get "itchy".
Hey @vladen, @nicole / product managers at Zendesk. It's pretty disappointing that you don't offer basic 301 redirect functionality and we have to resort to JS hacks to make this work.
Issues like this make it seem like our business is not something you're interested in keeping in the long run.
Is there a non-Javascript method to control redirected traffic? Javascript assumes that users have JS enabled. This also doesn't seem very scalable to manage content long-term, because we have limited ability to see the redirects, for control and for analytics.
"Product Managers are finding it too difficult to follow all of the feedback coming in on article comments." So you expect us, your customer, to sift through 121 pages of feedback points to submit our own comments? How about making it easy for us to be customers and to give feedback, and Zendesk taking the responsibility for cultivating our comments in a way that works for everyone?
Hey, wondering for an update on this! It's 2018, and we're hitting a lot of roadblocks where deleted links are becoming more costly for our product.
Would love to see a solution to set up redirect links for deleted articles - that doesn't involve Javascript.
Hi Aswin,
I see what's going on, the code should only run on dom ready:
That should do it.
Simon
I put in some redirects and it doesn't work on a phone - the "?mobile_site=true" parameter seems to cause a problem, although I'm not sure why. I've tested it other ways and it works fine, even with dummy content after the ID or "?asdfads=asdfasdfasd" and it redirects. But for some reason with "?mobile_site=true" it doesn't redirect.
I would like to second Stephen's point above - a non-JS method would be greatly appreciated!
One of our devs figured it out: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48618345/regexp-works-in-chrome-but-not-in-firefox-or-ie11?noredirect=1&lq=1
Hi,
I'm trying to redirect non-existent articles to our main page, but our JS file doesn't have that line:
While we do have a custom theme, it is based on Copenhagen and I have just checked JS file in Copenhagen and didn't manage to find it there either. I tried using different combinations, even looking for all mentions of "document", yet nothing similar seem to be present in neither in Copenhagen nor in our custom theme...
There is an error in the following line:
Should be notDefaultLanguage.
@stephen @joe: If it helps, I found a page in the Community that fits the topic and just copied + pasted my comment from above there.
For what it's worth, I'm in complete agreement with both of your comments too.
Hi David,
Articles still have the same ID
If your articles still have the same ID, then you need 1 redirect line.
Articles with changed IDs
You will need a single redirect line for each article if your articles no longer have the same article ID.
Thanks, Elliott,
I used your redirect idea to set up article redirects to simulate an article being in multiple sections without having to duplicate the content.
How to Include Article in Multiple Sections
Hi,
How do I redirect a knowledgebase article to an external URL?
In this case, the URLs are on our company website.
Hey Stephen -
We're trying to simplify it by keeping all of the conversations in the Product Feedback threads. You can do a quick search to see if there's a thread relevant to your feedback and if not, create a new post.
We're trying very hard to cultivate your comments in a way that works for everyone, and that may be reflected in new processes or a different means of collecting feedback altogether in the future. For the moment, we are trying to focus things in the Product Feedback topic.
Hi Monica,
As far as I know, when an anonymous user attempts to access an article they do not have access to, they will automatically be directed to the login page.
I'm not exactly sure how you would go about redirecting them to a page they do have access to other than using custom code.
I'll leave this post open in case other users want to jump in and offer up advice on how to set this up on your end.
I'll also reach out to our Zendesk Moderators to see if they have any guidance.
Cheers!
Hi Aswin,
Could you link me to your sandbox so I can take a look? Thanks
Hey Kelly, glad you've sorted it out!
Also, thanks for sharing your code, it looks great!
Hello everyone - Has anyone figured out how to use vanity URLs in Help Center/Guide?
Ex: help.company.com/offers linking to an article like https://help.company.com/hc/en-us/articles/360081928433-Latest-offers-and-promotions
Zendesk makes it really difficult to maintain redirects and we have a necessity to create a bunch of these vanity URLs. :(
Hi Eric,
You nailed it with your second question - that page appears and then the JS runs to execute the redirect. At the moment we do not have a workaround to offer.
That being said, you may want to post your issue and what you're looking for in the Guide product feedback forum. You may also want to comment or up-vote on this request: Allow Redirect of URLs
Thanks for pointing on that error! It works for me now.
Thank you, Simon. We are using a customized theme built on top of Copenhagen. Our help center is help.cricut.com.
Hi all - I'm trying to use the script for "Redirecting untranslated articles to an existing language", but it doesn't seem to work. I still get the error page instead of being redirected. Has anyone had success?
Is it because the code has error-page but the template is error_page.hbs? I swapped the hyphen with an underscore and it doesn't make a difference.
Exactly as another user has written,
I'm trying to redirect non-existent articles to our main page, but our JS file doesn't have that line:
While we do have a custom theme, it is based on Copenhagen and I have just checked JS file in Copenhagen and didn't manage to find it there either. I tried using different combinations, even looking for all mentions of "document", yet nothing similar seem to be present in neither in Copenhagen nor in our custom theme...
So how can we add the code to our JS file? It's throwing an error on this line:
`var isErrorPage = $(".error-page").length > 0;`
With the $ being the culprit.
Hi Devan - Community Manager, thanks, would the above solution work across brands, it should from what I've seen but I wonder how SEO might be impacted. We are keen to retain relevance whilst redirecting to our new brand. Any help from the moderator team would be greatly appreciated.
Is there a way to do this with deleted sections (instead of articles) - we've shifted articles from a discontinued section.
Hi -
We support two languages for most of our articles. For the ones we don't we to redirect the user to the same article in the existing language.
I tried the Redirecting untranslated articles to an existing language section in this article, but:
I dont see the document.ready function in our helpcenter code so I thought that I had to insert the whole function. I found a spot in the script.js file and put it there. It didn't work. Instead of redirecting to the article with the existing language, is redirecting to the main page.
Even without the code I inserted, the helpcenter is redirecting to the main page.
What am I missing?
I really want to avoid creating the same article in the unsupported language...
Simon - Our sandbox has different themes under construction, so it will be messy. But the change that you have suggested is available in our production now (help.cricut.com). Feel free to take a look again. Thanks a bunch for your help! :)
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