Sumbytes

I was asked to change Mediawiki’s #REDIRECT handling from transparent redirects to SEO friendly 301 redirects. I tried to create some extensions but none of the hooks seemed to provide a way to change the redirect functionality the way I needed to.

Turns out I only needed to edit Article.php and Wiki.php with very minor 1 line changes. Haven’t seen this posted anywhere else so enjoy.

#Article.php - Changed line 32 to return $rt->getFullUrl();
function followRedirect() {
  $text = $this->getContent();
  $rt = Title::newFromRedirect( $text );

  # process if title object is valid and not special:userlogout
  if( $rt ) {
    if( $rt->getInterwiki() != '' ) {
      if( $rt->isLocal() ) {
              // Offsite wikis need an HTTP redirect.
              //
              // This can be hard to reverse and may produce loops,
              // so they may be disabled in the site configuration.

              $source = $this->mTitle->getFullURL( 'redirect=no' );
              return $rt->getFullURL( 'rdfrom=' . urlencode( $source ) );
          }
      } else {
          if( $rt->getNamespace() == NS_SPECIAL ) {
              // Gotta handle redirects to special pages differently:
              // Fill the HTTP response "Location" header and ignore
              // the rest of the page we're on.
              //
              // This can be hard to reverse, so they may be disabled.

              if( $rt->isSpecial( 'Userlogout' ) ) {
                  // rolleyes
              } else {
                  return $rt->getFullURL();
              }
          }
          return $rt->getFullUrl();
      }
  }

  // No or invalid redirect
  return false;
}

#Wiki.php - Changed line 11 to $output->redirect( $article, "301" );
function initialize ( &$title, &$output, &$user, $request) {
    wfProfileIn( 'MediaWiki::initialize' );
    $this->preliminaryChecks ( $title, $output, $request ) ;
    $article = NULL;
    if ( !$this->initializeSpecialCases( $title, $output, $request ) ) {
        $article = $this->initializeArticle( $title, $request );
        if( is_object( $article ) ) {
            $this->performAction( $output, $article, $title, $user, $request );
        } elseif( is_string( $article ) ) {
            $output->redirect( $article, "301" );
        } else {
            throw new MWException( "Shouldn't happen: MediaWiki::initializeArticle() returned neither an object nor a URL" );
        }
    }
    wfProfileOut( 'MediaWiki::initialize' );
    return $article;
}