Keep the URL alias for a node when using href

Question

I am using Drupal 6 and I have set aliases for my nodes under Administer > Site building > URL aliases. This works properly; for example, I have alias = about/faq, node = node/33, and when I click on my menu the page shows up properly on the browser address bar as about/faq.

The problem I have occurs when I want to reference my node from hyperlinks placed in a page on the website (or any other website). I want to use <a href="http://mywebsite.com/node/33"> instead of <a href="http://mywebsite.com/about/faq"> so that I don't have to change the href if I later decide to change the alias. However, when I do this, the page shows up as http://mywebsite.com/node/33 on the browser address bar.

I was wondering whether it would be possible to have it show up as http://mywebsite.com/about/faq on the address bar instead.

Answer 1

You can use global redirect so that it does a 301 redirect to the aliased url.

I would recommend you additionally use path redirect so that you can keep old aliases and redirect them to the new one. That way you don't even have to worry about using the unaliased url.