Is there a way to leave a redirect post after moving a topic to a new category?

Support
1

I’m currently converting a large Vanilla forum to Discourse. I introduced our demo site to our moderators and they have some questions. One question is whether there is a way to leave a post redirecting people to the new category if a topic is moved. They are used to this feature from Vanilla (emphasis mine):

Once you click move, you will see a dialog box allowing you to choose what category the discussion should be moved into, and whether or not you should leave a redirect link (usually only opted into if the post is browser bookmarked by a great deal of folks).

It’s essentially a link that appears in the topic list of the original category with a title: “Moved: $post_title”. When you click on it, you go to the post’s new location. The idea is if people are following just the one category, they can see what happened to a post when it’s moved elsewhere. Our volume is such that most regulars only spend time in a handful of categories. (And some just stick with our most popular category.)

I don’t think we need exactly this feature necessarily, but I’m wondering how this scenario is handled in Discourse.

2

Topics which move between categories aren’t affected, the category isn’t part of the URL and the topic ID will resolve even if the topic is renamed.

Moved topics won’t leave a placeholder.

Topic replies will leave an action which redirects users to their new location.

3

Totally makes sense. I get a feeling our users like the redirect feature not because of the URL change (though it does change on Vanilla) but because it can be hard to find where a topic moved to if you aren’t paying particular attention to the destination category. I also see the feature used as a way to crosspost in several categories.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is “How can I reassure my users that not having a redirect post will be fine?”

4

If they’ve participated in the topic they’re going to be notified wherever it is.