How do redirect patterns work?

After moving to Shopify from another platform, many old addresses break at once, and they usually follow one shape: everything under /old-shop/, or every address ending in .html. A redirect pattern handles all of them with one line. Patterns are a section of the URL redirects page; press Add pattern. To bring a whole old store across, address by address, see moving to Shopify.

Write a pattern

• Broken address pattern: an address that starts with / and has one * for the part that changes, such as /old-shop/* or /*.html. It cannot be a page Shopify itself serves, such as the cart or the checkout.
• Send to: a page on your store, such as /collections/all. Use * again to reuse the part that changed, such as /products/*; the part reused must be one piece of an address, with no / in it.
• Also match under your language and market addresses: tick it to cover /fr/old-shop/… and your other language and market addresses too.

SignalLane refuses a pattern that would send a visitor back to a page it matches, or chain into another pattern. You can keep up to 50 patterns, and a saved change takes effect within a minute.

Let SignalLane find patterns

Press Find patterns in the Redirect patterns section. SignalLane looks at the broken pages on its record for groups that share a shape and lists them under Suggested patterns, with how many broken pages each covers and, where it can tell, a suggested target and how many of the pages match a live product's or a collection's web address. It is free and uses no AI. Save pattern (or Choose where they go when there is no suggested target) opens the pattern form filled in, with Send visitors on straight away off: nothing changes until you save, and a saved suggestion sends nobody on until you turn that on. SignalLane cannot tell whether a collection is published, so check a collection target before you save.

Send visitors on straight away

With Send visitors on straight away ticked, a visitor who lands on a matching broken page is sent to the new page with your usual countdown. It works for any kind of page, not only product pages, whatever you chose under When a page is missing except Off, and it needs the SignalLane app embed to be on. A page you stopped or gave a destination of your own keeps your choice, and a page that works again is never redirected.

Create Shopify redirects from a pattern

Press See matching broken pages in the pattern's menu. The preview lists the broken pages SignalLane has recorded that match, 50 a page, each with the address it would go to. Nothing is created yet. Tick the pages you want and press Create Shopify redirects. After you confirm, SignalLane creates one permanent Shopify redirect for each, with the same checks as every redirect it creates: it asks Shopify about each address first and never creates over a redirect you made.

• A page whose new address is itself on SignalLane's list of broken pages is marked, and skipped when you create.
• A page with a redirect suggestion waiting is skipped; review its suggestion first.
• As visitors find new matching pages, the pattern's row says how many are new since you last created redirects, and New since last created lists them.

Deleting a pattern

A deleted pattern stops sending visitors on within a minute. The Shopify redirects you created from it stay in Shopify, and on your store if you uninstall SignalLane, unless you choose Delete and remove its Shopify redirects. What a shopper sees on a dead page.