Help visitors who arrive at your blog via a link to a deleted post

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_QY4XI5lBdcfpWKKSeOKJrmbgbJeQUhoqqp3eXnb9Y6ybG3OOEXU85eptJCNfPdOPq3-YDT56jBqb3AZTbEaW6WFds29V0aCNP030ybAQWLIGxO_p-AhkZ8pGUiUKBpdJWkQcqbcP7BwF/w795-h488-no/regular-blogger-hints-tips-weekly-post-generic-picture.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_QY4XI5lBdcfpWKKSeOKJrmbgbJeQUhoqqp3eXnb9Y6ybG3OOEXU85eptJCNfPdOPq3-YDT56jBqb3AZTbEaW6WFds29V0aCNP030ybAQWLIGxO_p-AhkZ8pGUiUKBpdJWkQcqbcP7BwF/w795-h488-no/regular-blogger-hints-tips-weekly-post-generic-picture.png" width="200" /></a></div>If you sometimes delete posts from your blog, then it's a good idea to provide some help to people who who arrive at your blog via links to those posts.<br /><br />(Even if you don't have any links to those posts, it's likely that a search-engine somewhere will have some - and other people may have bookmarked or shared them, too.)<br /><br />There are two options for doing this:<br /><br /><a name="more"></a><br /><br /><h2>Post-specific redirects</h2>Use these if you want to re-direct visitors who come to a particular previous post:<br /><br />Go into <b>Settings > Search Preferences</b>, click Edit beside <b>Custom Redirects</b>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNRE4xInD81PCdJt2qKguff3-1eiQELJDPcTIeh7541uCtbb85KObt5yTWgey1KuUKyc23SmN3ukgh-uwEv3EXDw7gHleVsE8sm2CB2ovVNow4kLifDv-BoACpX9iGbTcPaNSmTpRSW_8E/w899-h476-no/make-redirect-instructions-for-posts-removed-from-your-blog.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNRE4xInD81PCdJt2qKguff3-1eiQELJDPcTIeh7541uCtbb85KObt5yTWgey1KuUKyc23SmN3ukgh-uwEv3EXDw7gHleVsE8sm2CB2ovVNow4kLifDv-BoACpX9iGbTcPaNSmTpRSW_8E/w899-h476-no/make-redirect-instructions-for-posts-removed-from-your-blog.png" width="90%" /></a></div><br />Click <b>New Redirect</b>, to create instructions for what to do if a visitor tries to navigate to a specific post.<br /><br />Put the address of the post that you want to make a re-direct for into the <b>From</b> field.<br /><br />Put the address of the post that you want to visitors to be taken to into the <b>To</b> field.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">For both addresses, the part you need to enter is the URL of the post from the first backslash on.   </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Do not put in your blog-address</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">Do include the date-part of the URL and the backslash.<br />eg<br />for    <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html">http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html</a><br />use   <b><span style="font-size: large;">/</span>2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html</b></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Tick the <b>Permanent</b> check-box.</div><div><br /></div><div>Click <b>Save</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Click <b>Save Changes</b>.   (Yes, you need to do both Saves)</div><br /><br /><h2>A generic page-not-found message</h2>Use this if you do not want to set up post-specific re-directs, or if you cannot remember the URL of your deleted posts.<br /><br />Go into <b>Settings > Search Preferences</b>, and edit the Custom Page Not Found option.<br /><br />Put in some text welcoming the visitor, explaining that the page they were looking for is no longer available, and suggesting other places that they could try.<br /><br /> This text can include links to other posts, so long as you hand-code them. (You might like to get code for this <a href="http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/05/getting-html-code-to-put-picture-into.html">using the post editor</a>).

Help visitors who arrive at your blog via a link to a deleted post

If you sometimes delete posts from your blog, then it's a good idea to provide some help to people who who arrive at your blog via links...

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