If you’re planning to move your blog to Substack, you should know how it handles link redirects. Substack redirects and maps links on your old blog to your new one automatically, including the main RSS feed. So none of your links will break if you move your blog to Substack, and people following your blog using RSS will continue to do so. Of course, this is standard for any good blogging platform. But there are two more things Substack does.

Substack’s auto-redirects aren’t just for URLs that match 1:1 but also smartly cater to variations. For example, if you move your blog from WordPress to Substack, users visiting the now old URL blog.jatan.space/2018/11/19/twists-and-turns-at-rimae-posidonius are auto-redirected to the new one at blog.jatan.space/p/twists-and-turns-at-rimae-posidonius.

The automatic redirects also work for WordPress pages that you recreate as posts on Substack. For example, a WordPress page URL such as blog.jatan.space/our-moon will be redirected to its post on Substack at blog.jatan.space/p/our-moon if you decide to make one at the URL using the Substack editor’s custom slug option. This is useful in the context of Substack because other than the About page, Substack doesn’t have the concept of static pages on your site.

All that being said, Substack doesn’t provide an option for users to add redirects manually, which is one major shortcoming in an otherwise excellent, well-rounded blogging platform. There’s no indication that manual redirects are coming anytime soon to the platform but I hope more people ask for it and Substack delivers.