I was looking in GWMT recently and noticed 400 more URL’s than posts published have been indexed. I guess its because of image attachment pages which is why i’ve written this post.
To redirect attachment pages to the parent post URL, there are at least 5 different solutions to choose from:
- Write a custom function with conditional tag using both the wp_redirect function and template_redirect function.
- Add 1 line of redirect code directly to your themes attachment or image.php file.
- Use the settings in the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin if installed.
- Install the Attachment Page Redirect plugin or similar.
- Genesis Users: Create a new attachment.php or image.php file which includes the redirect to post parent URL code and upload it to your child themes root directory.
1. Custom Function With Redirect
Simply copy this PHP code from the view raw link in the Gist and paste it at the end of your child themes functions.php file.
2. Add Redirect to image.php
- Create a new file using a code editor.
- Copy the code from the View raw link in the Gist labelled image.php
- Paste the code into the file and upload it to your child themes root directory.
Tested on the Twenty Fourteen default theme for WordPress.
3. WordPress SEO Permalink Settings
4. Attachment Page Redirect plugin
5. Genesis Attachment File With Redirect
- Create a new file named attachment.php using a code editor like Notepad++
- Copy the PHP from the view raw link in the Gist.
- Paste the code into the file and upload it to the root directory of your child theme
If you have found another way to redirect attachment pages to the parent post, please add the solution in the comments.
I’ll update this post if it makes any difference and let you know what happened.
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