Moved to Ghost? How to find every missing page and redirect it

Moving a site to Ghost is the easy part. The import runs, the posts are there, the new theme looks great. Then, a few weeks later, you notice Google still sends people to /2021/05/my-old-post/, a newsletter from two years ago links to /category/guides/, and every one of those visitors lands on your 404 page.

This guide covers what breaks when you migrate to Ghost, how Ghost redirects work, and how to find the URLs you missed, using the visitors who are already hitting them.

Why URLs break when you move to Ghost

Every platform has its own URL habits. Ghost's are simple: posts live at /post-slug/ (or under a prefix like /blog/ if your routes say so), tags at /tag/name/, authors at /author/name/. Anything your old platform did differently stops working on the day you switch the domain over.

Those are the patterns. The surprises are the one-offs: a page you renamed during the move, a post you merged into another, a landing page you decided not to bring over, an old slug with a typo someone linked to in 2019.

What a broken URL costs you

• Visitors. Someone clicks a link in an old newsletter, a forum thread or a bookmark and gets a 404. Most of them leave.
• Search rankings. The old URL had links pointing to it. Without a redirect, Google eventually drops it, and the authority it built doesn't pass to the new page.
• Signups. Your best-performing old posts are often the ones still bringing in members. Those are exactly the URLs people keep finding.

How redirects work in Ghost

Ghost reads redirects from one file, redirects.yaml (older sites use redirects.json). You upload it in Ghost Admin → Settings → Labs → Redirects. Uploading replaces the whole file, so always download the current one first and add to it.

301:
  /category/guides/: /tag/guides/
  /feed/: /rss/
  ^\/(\d{4})\/(\d{2})\/([a-z0-9-]+)\/?$: /$3/
  ^\/p\/([a-z0-9-]+)\/?$: /$1/

302:
  /summer-sale/: /pricing/

• 301 means the page moved for good. Search engines move the old URL's ranking to the new one. Use it for almost everything after a migration.
• 302 means temporary. Use it for a sale page or a campaign you'll switch back later.
• A line starting with ^ is a regular expression. The third line above sends every dated WordPress URL to the bare slug, and the fourth does the same for Substack's /p/ links. One rule like that covers hundreds of posts.

Pattern rules handle the bulk. The problem is the URLs that don't fit any pattern, because you can't write a redirect for a URL you don't know about.

How to find the URLs you missed

The usual advice is to crawl the old site before you shut it down and compare lists. That works if you remembered to do it. Other places to look:

• Google Search Console → Pages → Not found (404). Accurate, but it only shows URLs Googlebot found, and it can take weeks to update.
• Your server or CDN logs. Complete, but on Ghost(Pro) you don't have them.
• Your analytics. Most tools don't record 404s unless you set up a custom event.

The quickest signal is your own 404 page. Every request that ends there is a URL someone actually tried. If your 404 page wrote those down, you would have a list of exactly the redirects you need, sorted by how much they matter.

That's what Ectobuilder's Log missing pages does.

Log missing pages with Ectobuilder

When it's on, your theme's 404 page reports each missing URL back to Ectobuilder: the path, how many times it was requested, and where the visitors came from (Google, a link on another site, an AI assistant, or direct). You get a list in the editor, with the most-requested URLs at the top and a box next to each one to redirect it.

Step 1: Turn it on

Open your theme in Ectobuilder, click Settings, then SEO, and switch on Log missing pages. Deploy the theme. From then on, every visit to a page that doesn't exist is counted.

Step 2: Let it collect for a week or two

Some old URLs get a visit a day, some one a month. Give it time before you judge the list. Obvious junk, such as bots probing for /wp-login.php or .env files, is filtered out, and known crawlers aren't counted.

Step 3: Redirect the ones that matter

Start at the top. For each URL, type where it should go into Redirect to…. The field suggests your real posts, pages and tags, so you don't have to look slugs up. Click Redirect and the row shows where it now points. If a URL isn't worth a redirect, dismiss it and it moves out of the list.

Step 4: Upload the file to Ghost

Every redirect you add lands in the Redirects list below, as a 301. Download redirects.yaml from there and upload it in Ghost Admin under Settings → Labs → Redirects. The list includes any redirects you added by hand, so the file you upload is complete.

Moving to Ghost? Build the new theme in Ectobuilder by clicking, and let its 404 page tell you which old URLs still need a redirect. Start free and only pay when you publish.

Try it free

A migration redirect checklist

1. Before the switch: export a list of every URL on the old site (its sitemap is a good start) and note your top 50 pages by traffic.
2. Write the pattern rules: dates, /p/, /post/, /category/, /feed/, whatever your old platform used.
3. Map the one-offs from your top pages by hand: renamed, merged and retired pages.
4. Upload redirects.yaml on launch day, and test a handful of old URLs in a private window.
5. Turn on Log missing pages and check it weekly for the first month, then monthly.
6. Keep the redirects. Old links live for years. Don't remove a 301 because it looks old.

Common mistakes

• Sending everything to the homepage. Google treats a redirect to an unrelated page like a 404. Point each URL at its closest match, or let it 404 if there isn't one.
• Uploading a new file without the old rules. Ghost replaces the file on upload. Download first, then add.
• Redirect chains. If A goes to B and B now goes to C, change A to point straight at C.
• Using 302 for permanent moves. The page will work, but search engines keep the old URL in their index.
• Forgetting images. Old posts on other sites may embed your /wp-content/uploads/ images directly. A pattern rule to /content/images/ only helps if the file names match, so check a few.

The 404s that aren't from your migration

Once Log missing pages has been running for a while, you may notice URLs that never existed on any version of your site, with ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude as the source. AI assistants sometimes link to pages that sound right but were never written. We wrote about what to do with phantom AI traffic: often the best answer is to write the page.

FAQ

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