Redirect Doctor

You have been redirecting URLs for years. Every rename, every restructure, every fixed typo added one more rule. Nobody ever went back to check whether they still make sense together. Redirect Doctor reads the redirects you already have and tells you what is wrong with them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC1u5p-e0Eg It does not create redirects behind your back and it does not replace your redirection plugin. It works with Redirection, Rank Math and Yoast SEO Premium, and audits what is there, on ten screens:

• Chained redirects — /a/ sends to /b/, which sends to /c/. Every visitor and every search engine pays for the extra hops. Cascades of eight steps are common on old sites.
• Loops — /a/ sends to /b/, and /b/ sends back to /a/. The browser gives up and the page never opens. This is the only fault that truly breaks something for a visitor.
• Conflicts — the same address with two different destinations. Only one can win, and it is not always the one you meant.
• Duplicates — the same rule written several times over the years.
• 404 errors, grouped — not a raw log, but pages people actually keep asking for, sorted by how often they are hit, with a suggested destination for each.
• Redirects safe to delete — rules that have not sent a single visitor in years.
• Redirects sent to the home page — rules that do not send the visitor to a replacement page, but to your home page. This is not a redirect, it is a soft 404: you are telling Google that a dead address now holds your home page, and your home page slowly takes on the reputation of every dead address pointed at it.
• Doubtful destinations — redirects whose starting address and destination share no word at all. Often a batch of rules pointed at something that has nothing to do with them. The screen ranks them; you decide, and you can mark a pair as intended so it stops being reported.
• Links to fix in your content — posts and pages that still link to an address which now redirects. Fixing the link removes the hop at the source.
• Redirects in .htaccess — the redirects written in your .htaccess file, shown for information whatever plugin you use. The server reads that file before WordPress, so a rule there wins over any plugin. Redirect Doctor reads it and never modifies it.

Everything is measured against your own site. No external service is contacted, no data leaves your server, and nothing is written unless you tick a box and click a button. Works with Redirection, Rank Math and Yoast SEO Premium Redirect Doctor reads the redirects of Redirection (John Godley), of the Rank Math Redirections module, and of Yoast SEO Premium — including the rules Yoast leaves behind in your database after it has been uninstalled. It works on one plugin at a time. If several of them hold redirects on your site, it stops and asks you which one is the reference: correcting the wrong one would repair nothing. Yoast keeps neither a hit counter, nor a date of last use, nor a 404 log. The two screens that need them say so instead of showing empty or misleading figures. If no redirect plugin is active, Redirect Doctor tells you so and has nothing to analyse. What the free version does The free version is a complete diagnosis. All ten screens, the real totals, the filters, the search, the CSV export, the copy-to-clipboard button — and the printable health check. That health check sums up everything found on your site in numbers, with the risk each one represents, and names no address. You can hand it to a client or a manager as it is. Each table shows its first five rows, and tells you how many more there are. The counters on the tiles are never rounded, never capped and never faked: if your site has 1,609 unresolved 404s, it says 1,609. Two things belong to the Pro version:

1. Fixing. Every action button is visible but switched off. Nothing is deleted, created or rewritten by the free version — ever.
2. The addresses that form your loops. The free version tells you how many loops you have and how many redirects they involve. Finding a loop buried in fifteen years of accumulated rules is the hard part; undoing it takes three clicks.

What the Pro version adds

• Every row of every table, not the first five.
• The loop map: which addresses point at each other.
• One-click fixing, with an undo. Shorten a chain so each step goes straight to the final destination. Delete dead rules. Create redirects for your most-hit 404s. Break a loop by removing a link.
• Rewriting the links inside your content that still point at an old address, as relative addresses so they survive a domain change.
• Importing from one plugin to another. Bring the redirects of an old plugin, or of your .htaccess file, into the plugin you use: identical rules are left out, missing ones are ticked one by one, and leftovers can be deleted from the old plugin. Every step can be undone.
• An action log of everything that was changed, with its own export.
• A health check that also shows where you started and where you are now.

Nothing is ever changed without a ticked box, and every batch stays recoverable afterwards. Pro is available from orion-sigma.com.

1. Make sure Redirection, Rank Math (with its Redirections module) or Yoast SEO Premium is installed and active — Redirect Doctor reads their data.
2. Upload the redirect-doctor folder to /wp-content/plugins/, or install the ZIP from Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
3. Activate the plugin.
4. Open Tools → Redirect Doctor. The first analysis runs on its own.

The analysis re-runs by itself once a week, and immediately after any change you make.

4.1.0

• Duplicates and Conflicts: the rule marked Kept is now the one with the most hits, not the first in the list. A rule created recently no longer hides the one your visitors really use.

4.0.8

• Import: the box at the top of a table now ticks the rows of that table only.

4.0.7

• Import now moves the redirects: once imported, they are deleted from the old plugin. "Undo the import" puts them back there.

4.0.6

• Import: the counter at the top now adds up exactly the rows of the tables shown below.

4.0.5

• Import: addresses that WordPress already redirects by itself (the old address of a post whose address changed) are no longer offered for import.

4.0.2

• .htaccess: rules whose destination depends on the address requested ($1, $2…) are shown apart, as written, and no longer counted or listed as page redirects.

4.0.1

• Pro: the Licence screen opens again. It called a function removed in 3.3.1.

4.0.0

• Redirect Doctor is no longer limited to Redirection: it now reads and fixes the redirects of Rank Math and Yoast SEO Premium too. Redirection is no longer required.
• A new Settings screen: when several plugins hold redirects, you choose the one Redirect Doctor works on. The others are never touched.
• A tenth screen lists the redirects of your .htaccess file, for information. Redirect Doctor never modifies that file. A rule present both there and in your plugin shows up in Duplicates or Conflicts, with the line to remove by hand.
• Doubtful destinations: three buttons on one line — delete, apply a 410, or mark as intended.
• Pro: import redirects from another plugin or from .htaccess into the plugin you use, and delete the leftovers from the old one. Every step can be undone.
• Rank Math: 404 errors are read when its 404 Monitor module is on, and the screen says so when it is off.
• Yoast keeps no hits, dates or 404 log: the screens that need them say so.

3.3.3

• New colour for the main action button.

3.3.2

• The target address now keeps its trailing slash on screen and, above all, in the links that "Links to fix" rewrites. Writing /page instead of /page/ made WordPress answer with a canonical redirect, so the tool replaced one pointless round trip with another.
• The rewritten link is taken from the canonical permalink of the destination when the destination is a published post or page.

3.3.1

• Inline CSS and JS now go through the official WordPress functions: wp_register_style with wp_add_inline_style for the admin screens, wp_print_inline_style_tag and wp_print_inline_script_tag for the standalone report.
• The print button no longer carries an inline onclick handler.

3.3.0

• Renamed to Redirect Doctor. The former name was the registered trademark of an unrelated company.
• New menu icon: a stethoscope drawn in the plugin, as no Dashicon suggests health.

3.2.4

• Reads a third form of destination used by Redirection for "URL and server" rules, where the target sits inside a serialised array. The report showed that raw array instead of the address.
• Shortening a chain now writes inside that form instead of replacing it, so the rule keeps its server and its fallback address. Replacing it would have broken the rule.

3.2.3

• First release on WordPress.org.
• Nine screens, laid out vertically: chained redirects, loops, conflicts, duplicates, grouped 404s, redirects sent to the home page, doubtful destinations, redirects safe to delete, and links to fix inside your own content.
• Doubtful destinations: compares the words of a starting address with those of its destination, and lets you mark a pair as intended so it stops being reported.
• Detects a site redirecting to itself in an endless loop, and recognises the WooCommerce geolocation fingerprint behind it.
• A one-click health check, ready to print or save as PDF. It names no address, so it can be handed to a client as it is.

2.32.0

• New, and free: spots addresses that are not missing pages at all, but a site redirecting to itself in an endless loop. Names the culprit when your server reports it.
• Recognises the WooCommerce geolocation fingerprint, and says exactly which setting to change.

2.31.0

• Pro: rewrite the links inside your content that still point at an old address. Tick the lines, click once, and undo it if you change your mind.
• Links are written as relative addresses, so they survive a domain change.

2.30.0

• Pro: a Licence screen. Enter your key, the site is registered, the fixing features open.
• If our licence server is ever unreachable, nothing changes on your site.

2.28.0

• New: a one-click health check, ready to print or save as PDF. It sums up the whole analysis in numbers and names no address, so it can be handed to a client as it is.
• Pro: the report also shows where you started and where you are now.

2.27.0

• Declares Redirection as a required plugin, so WordPress refuses activation without it instead of showing an empty screen.
• Added this readme.

2.26.0

• The "more rows" notice is now the last row of the table, introduced by three dots, instead of a paragraph underneath. A table that stops dead looks complete.
• The CSV export skips that row.

2.25.0

• The free version shows the first five rows of each table, and says how many remain. Five per table, not per screen. Tile counters remain complete and truthful.

2.24.0

• The loops screen now reports how many loops exist and how many redirects they involve, without listing the addresses, in the free version.

2.23.0

• Free and Pro became two separate downloads. The code that writes to the database now lives in its own file, which the free package does not contain.

2.22.0

• Conflicts split away from duplicates: the same address with two different destinations is a far more serious fault than a rule written twice.
• Nine screens, each with its own colour, and an explanation written in plain language.

2.16.0

• Action history, with its own export.
• Deleting a batch became recoverable.