One of the most useful things I’ve done for my personal site recently is set up short, memorable URLs that redirect to the tools and platforms I use every day. For example, if you want to book a meeting with me, you can now just visit:

/book

…which will redirect you to my Calendly page.

The Problem with Hugo Redirects

At first, I tried to use Hugo’s built-in redirect system. Hugo supports redirects through a combination of page front matter and generated aliases, but I ran into a couple of issues:

  • They don’t support external URLs — Hugo’s redirect aliases are primarily for internal page changes (like old URLs pointing to new ones). You can’t just say “take /book and go to Calendly.”
  • They generate HTML files — Each redirect creates an HTML file with a meta refresh tag and JavaScript, which feels clunky and slow for something as simple as a redirect.
  • Hard to manage — There’s no centralized way to manage a bunch of redirects across the site. It felt scattered and fragile.

Enter: Netlify Redirects via netlify.toml

Since I deploy my site using Netlify, I discovered a much cleaner and more powerful alternative: defining redirect rules directly in my netlify.toml file. It looks something like this:

[[redirects]]
  from = “/book”
  to = “https://calendly.com/d/crsy-9v5-m4y”
  status = 301
  force = true

I found out that each redirect needs the [[redirects]] block, otherwise it won’t redirect.

You just drop this at the end of your netlify.toml, commit, push—and it works.

Why This Is Better

  • Fast and clean — These redirects are handled by Netlify’s CDN edge nodes, so they’re instant and invisible.
  • Supports external URLs — Point anywhere you like, not just to content within your site.
  • Centralized and scalable — Manage all your redirects in one place with version control.
  • No HTML clutter — No need to generate placeholder HTML pages just to jump somewhere else.

My Use Case

Now I use this method for:

  • /book → Calendly
  • /github → My GitHub profile
  • /linkedin → My LinkedIn
  • about/drmigrate → Calendly Routing Form
  • And more to come…

It’s simple, effective, and makes it easier to share my links without remembering long URLs.

—

If you’re deploying a Hugo site on Netlify and struggling with Hugo’s redirects, I highly recommend switching to the netlify.toml approach. It’s flexible, intuitive, and just works.

Let me know if you want to see my full Netlify config or need help setting yours up!