Detour FAQ. No upsell, no detour.

Detour is a free, open-source WordPress plugin that catches 404 (Not Found) errors and routes lost visitors to a destination that converts. It also writes every 404 to an indexed log so you can find and fix the broken URLs systematically.

Yes. Detour is licensed GPL-2.0-or-later. There is no paid tier, no upgrade nag, no telemetry, and no affiliate or backlink injection. The full source is on GitHub at github.com/centrevilletech/detour.

WordPress 5.0 or later. PHP 7.4 or later, tested through 8.3. MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.5+. Detour uses BINARY(16) generated columns for fast URL hash lookups, which is why the modern database minimums are required.

Per-URL routing rules with three match types (exact, prefix with optional {path} substitution, and regex). Five HTTP status codes (301, 302, 307, 308, and 410 Gone). A site-wide fallback for unmatched 404s. One-click rule creation directly from the live 404 log. Sortable hit history with per-IP deduplication. Indexed counters that scale past a million rows. Optional weekly email reports of broken-URL trends. A missing-image fallback for .gif, .jpg, and .png requests. An admin-bar widget showing redirect metrics.

Upload the detour folder to wp-content/plugins/ on your WordPress site (or install the zip from the GitHub release), activate it from the Plugins screen, and configure the fallback destination under Settings → Detour. Database tables and indexes provision themselves on first activation.

Redirection is the most popular general-purpose WordPress redirect plugin, free and well maintained. It is excellent for URL-to-URL redirects with regex. Detour is built specifically for 404 recovery: it ships with a site-wide fallback for unmatched 404s, an indexed counter that scales past a million rows without a full-table filesort, and one-click promotion of any real 404 hit into a routing rule. Use Redirection if your priority is general redirect management. Use Detour if your priority is catching dead-end traffic and triaging broken links at scale.

Detour is a fork of All 404 Redirect to Homepage by wp-buy, released under the same GPL-2.0-or-later license. The fork removed bundled commercial JavaScript that was redistributed without a license, removed upsell banners and “Upgrade” admin notices, removed outbound backlinks injected into email digests, and removed dead code paths and broken helpers. It added a real per-URL rules engine, a BINARY(16) URL hash column with an indexed counter, object-cache-backed lookups, and throttled .htaccess writes. It is drop-in compatible: same table name, same option keys, same stored data layout.

404page replaces the default WordPress 404 template with a chosen page. Detour does that too via the site-wide fallback, plus it logs every miss to an indexed table, supports per-URL rules with three match types, and returns the right HTTP status code per rule, including 410 Gone for content that should stay deleted. 404page does not log misses or support per-URL routing.

Yoast SEO Premium includes a redirects manager, but the feature is paywalled behind the Premium subscription. Detour is free, GPL-2.0-or-later, and focused exclusively on 404 recovery and routing. If you already pay for Yoast Premium and want one tool for everything, use Yoast. If you want a free, focused tool that scales to a million 404 hits without a paid upgrade, use Detour.

Rank Math has a built-in redirections module in its free tier. It is a competent general-purpose redirect manager. Detour is narrower in scope: it focuses on 404 interception, logging, and recovery, with a counter that handles million-row tables without a filesort. The two coexist on the same site if you want both general redirect management and 404 triage.

For 404 recovery specifically, yes. Redirection is broader (a full redirect manager). Detour is sharper (focused on 404s with logging at scale). Sites that lose traffic to dead-end URLs rather than to URL changes will see more value from Detour. The two can also run together if you want both.

Yes. Most general-purpose redirect plugins handle URL-to-URL redirects but do not log per-URL hit counts at scale. Run Detour for 404 triage and the other plugin for general redirect management if you need both.

No. The 404 path uses a BINARY(16) URL hash column with an indexed equality lookup, plus object-cache-backed lookups for prefix and regex rules. The .htaccess check is throttled to once every 24 hours via a transient instead of running on every admin pageview, which was an issue in the upstream plugin.

Yes. The schema includes a BINARY(16) URL hash column and a count index so admin “sort by hits” no longer triggers a full-table filesort. Detour has been tested past one million rows.

Only the optional weekly email report runs on cron. The redirect path itself is synchronous and runs inside the normal 404 request handler, not on a background worker.

No. Detour makes no outbound HTTP requests for analytics, telemetry, license checks, plugin update phone-home, or upsell content. The only optional outbound traffic is the weekly email report you choose to send to yourself.

The plugin records hits per URL with per-IP deduplication so a single visitor reloading a broken page does not inflate the counters. IPs are stored locally in the log table for that purpose. They are not transmitted anywhere outside your site.

No. The upstream plugin’s outbound backlink injection in email digests, the “More Plugins” admin link, and the “Upgrade” notices were all removed in the fork. Detour adds nothing visible to your customers or your admins beyond the plugin itself.

It should. The plugin’s logic runs on the 404 request path, which most caching plugins do not page-cache. If you do cache 404 responses (uncommon), clear your page cache after configuring Detour so the new redirects take effect.

Yes. The plugin uses the per-site $wpdb->prefix so each site in a multisite network has its own log table and rules table.

Yes. Detour supports three match types: exact URL match, prefix match with optional {path} substitution into the destination, and full regex. Pick the simplest match type that gets the job done.

Yes. Detour does not care about the transport layer. It runs inside WordPress on the request that has already been resolved as a 404. Behind a CDN, make sure the CDN is forwarding the 404 origin response to the visitor rather than caching its own 404 page.

Five: 301 (permanent redirect), 302 (temporary), 307 (temporary, preserve method), 308 (permanent, preserve method), and 410 Gone for content that should stay deleted and de-indexed by search engines.

Use 410 Gone when the page is intentionally and permanently deleted and you do not want it in search results anymore. Search engines de-index 410 URLs faster than they drop 404s, and a 410 is more honest than redirecting a deleted URL to an unrelated page just to avoid the dead end.

Install Detour over the original. The table name {$prefix}redirects_404 and the option keys p404_redirect_options and options-404-redirect-group are unchanged, so your existing settings and 404 history carry over without any migration step. The new rules engine adds one additional table; nothing in the upstream layout was renamed or moved.

Detour does not auto-import rules from unrelated plugins. Either keep the existing plugin running for URL-to-URL redirects and let Detour handle 404 triage, or export rules from the old plugin and recreate them in Detour using the matching match type (exact, prefix, or regex).

Right tool for the job. We build with WordPress, Hugo, Astro, and other stacks depending on what the problem actually needs. A two-page marketing site for an open-source plugin does not need a CMS, a database, a server runtime, or a login screen. Hugo gives us a static site that loads fast, deploys cheap, and has zero attack surface beyond the rendered HTML and SVG. As Dr. Ian Malcolm put it in Jurassic Park: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. Just because we can build everything in WordPress does not mean we should. We use WordPress where WordPress earns its keep. We use Hugo where Hugo earns its.

Detour is built and maintained by Centreville Tech LLC, an engineering shop based in Centreville, Alabama. The plugin came out of production work on client WordPress sites where the original plugin’s bundled ad code, premium nags, and table layout were costing real money. The fork went public on the same GPL-2.0-or-later license that let us start in the first place.

Open an issue on the GitHub repository. Include your WordPress version, your PHP version, the plugin version, and the URL pattern that misbehaved.

Pull requests on GitHub. The project is GPL-2.0-or-later. There is no contributor license agreement to sign.

Centreville Tech handles paid support, custom plugin development, performance work, and integrations. The first call is free and the slide deck is optional.