Web server redirects in multisite environments disabled

Web server redirects in a multisite environment may cause some issues that can be damaging to your site’s SEO. For that reason, we’ve disabled the redirect methods for such sites. Below, you can read about the reasons that led to this decision.

Why we disabled web server redirects in a multisite environment

The redirects generated by Yoast SEO can be of two types: 1) PHP-based or 2) webserver-based. On a WordPress multisite environment, web server redirects can create serious problems, damaging you SEO. That’s because they are handled via directives added to the configuration files of your web server, which might apply to all the subsites of your multisite network. This means that redirects generated in a subsite might be used for all the other subsites.

It might happen, for example, that a redirect from https://site1.domain.tld/source to https://site1.domain.tld/destination would also be used for https://domain.tld/source, https://site2.domain.tld/source etc. That can cause unexpected redirections and 404 errors. In other scenarios, setting a redirect in a subsite might result in deleting the redirects set by the all other subsites. That can also trigger unwanted behaviours and “page not found” errors. For these reasons, we have decided to discourage web server redirects in multisite environments.

If you are already using web server redirects in your multisite and you are not experiencing problems, the feature won’t be disabled and you can continue to use it. Instead, if you are using PHP-based redirects on a multisite environment, you won’t be able to switch to web server redirects. The controls for that in the ‘Redirects’ page will be disabled. This will happen if you were using web server redirects and you switch to PHP-based redirects. In that case, you won’t be able to switch back to web server redirects anymore.

If your environment is not a WordPress multisite, nothing will change and you will still be able to freely choose the redirects type that suits best your needs.