Using pattern redirects for discontinued Shopify International Markets
If you discontinue a localised subfolder, pattern redirects can send visitors to alternative pages.
Using pattern redirects for discontinued Shopify International Markets
Shopify International (previously Shopify Markets) allows merchants to manage multiple markets for a single Shopify store. This feature helps you structure your website’s URLs by adding specific subfolders for different regions or languages. For example, you could have example.com for your primary market, and example.com/fr for the French market.
These market subfolders enable you to cater to different international audiences while maintaining a coherent and organised website structure.
However, if you discontinue a market, the URLs from the related subfolder will become 404 broken links and disrupt customer journeys.
You can use pattern redirects to minimise this disruption.
Discontinuing subfolder markets
For example if the French language and France region subfolder (example.com/fr-fr) was discontinued, the following pattern redirect would ensure traffic to this subfolder is redirected to the equivalent pages on your primary domain:
- Redirect from:
/fr-fr/⑴ - Redirect to:
/⑴
Where ⑴ is a wildcard token.
Note that each wildcard token represents a string of text between two forward slashes, To create a pattern for URLs with multiple ‘sections’ between forward slashes, a wildcard token should be used for each ‘section’. Follow our guide on creating pattern redirects to learn more.
Switching subfolder markets to subdomains
If you switch an international market from a subfolder (example.com/fr-fr) to a subdomain (fr.example.com) or a secondary domain (example-fr.com), you can use a pattern redirect to ensure traffic to the discontinued subfolder is redirected to the new equivalent pages.
Redirecting to a subdomain
- Redirect from:
/fr-fr/⑴ - Redirect to:
https://fr.example.com/⑴
Where ⑴ is a wildcard token and https://fr.example.com is the new subdomain.
Note that each wildcard token represents a string of text between two forward slashes, To create a pattern for URLs with multiple ‘sections’ between forward slashes, a wildcard token should be used for each ‘section’. Follow our guide on creating pattern redirects to learn more.
Redirecting to a secondary domain
- Redirect from:
/fr-fr/⑴ - Redirect to:
https://www.example-fr.com/⑴
Where ⑴ is a wildcard token and https://www.example-fr.com is the new secondary domain.
Note that each wildcard token represents a string of text between two forward slashes, To create a pattern for URLs with multiple ‘sections’ between forward slashes, a wildcard token should be used for each ‘section’. Follow our guide on creating pattern redirects to learn more.