meilisearch / meilisearch/documentation

Restore automated redirect checking in CI (removed in #3624)

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SEO tooling and maintenance
Dominant language
MDX
Stars
174
Forks
276
Avg merge
2d 1h
Merged PRs (30d)
6

Description

Follow-up to #3672.

#3624 removed the redirect-checking workflow on 2026-07-09 because it was "always broken". Four days later, #3542 shipped a navigation restructure that reintroduced a redirect bug (#3611), which had to be caught by hand and fixed in #3629. With no CI check, the next regression ships silently.

Given the SEO cost of redirect gaps documented in #3672 (the March restructure ran without complete redirects for 10 days to 3 weeks), some form of automated check is worth having again, even a minimal one. Suggestion for a more robust approach than the old script:

  1. On every PR that touches config/navigation.json, config/redirects.json, or deletes/renames any .mdx file: verify that every previously reachable page path is either still present or has a source entry in config/redirects.json. This is a pure file diff against the base branch, no HTTP calls, so it cannot be flaky.
  2. Verify every redirect destination in config/redirects.json resolves to an existing .mdx page path (or another redirect source, with cycle detection). Also pure file checks.
  3. Optionally, a scheduled weekly job that curls a fixed list of high-traffic legacy URLs (top ~50 from GSC) and fails on anything that does not end in a 200.

Steps 1 and 2 would have caught both the March gap and the #3542 regression without the flakiness that got the old workflow deleted.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the redirect-checking workflow removed in #3624, then inspect config/navigation.json and config/redirects.json along with the changes described in #3542 and #3611. Implement checks for missing previously reachable paths, invalid destinations, and redirect cycles; verify that the checks run on relevant pull requests without HTTP calls.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
github-actions
Domain
ci-cd, documentation
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
55/100

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