Redmine › Project Removal

Download Project Removal 0.1.1

Currently I’m working on making all my plugins compatible to Redmine 2.5.x (and I’m very close to finishing it). For this I test them under the recent version of Redmine one-by-one. Quite rarely, but sometimes plugins do not need any modification to work under Redmine 2.5.x – i.e., they work without any issues. And the Project Removal appeared to be one of such plugins...

Considering this there were no reasons for this release to happen... But, while testing it I found an old undiscovered bug: When the redirection contained just a message (i.e., no redirection URL), accessing pages of the removed project led to crashes of Redmine. So, I fixed the found bug and made this release.

Download Project Removal 0.1.0

The Project Removal plugin has been finally ported to Redmine 2.x, i.e., version 0.1.0 of this plugin will now run fine on Redmine 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x and 2.3.x. This version also supports Redmine 1.0.x and 1.4.x.

This plugin is intended for projects, which were moved to another location and/or for which you would like to specify the reason for being removed. To achieve needed results the plugin integrates into the Redmine project archiving functionality. Thus archiving a project you gain the possibility to redirect users, requesting pages of the project, to another URL (even to URL of another Redmine) and/or to show some message to them.

Fortunately the new release is not only about supporting recent Redmine versions but also comes with some important improvements:

The main improvement is the switch to the 301 HTTP status code (Moved Permanently) in cases, when the redirection delay is equal to zero. This is recommended by search engines for SEO purposes. Unfortunately in this case the redirection message will be ignored (but it would not be seen anyway).

Other improvements include the redirection settings being removed, when the project gets unarchived.

Happy removing!

P.S. I clearly understand, that not being updated for this long period the plugin probably have lost its users (and this new release means gaining new users mostly). Sorry for not updating it so long!

With this release and accordingly to earlier announced plans the identifier of the project has been changed (from redmine-removal to project-removal). In most cases this means nothing for end users (as for renaming I used the Project Alias plugin). But in the case you used the project SVN you need to update the repository URL of your local copy using the following command:

$ svn switch --relocate http://svn.s-andy.com/redmine-removal http://svn.s-andy.com/project-removal

The idea of this plugin came to me when I needed to move my projects from one Redmine hosting site to another (my own). Till that moment my projects were alive already for some time. As it usually is I added many external links to my projects - on Redmine.org, in some forums there and on other sites, in some E-Mails sent to users and friends, in social networks etc. If some of them could be fixed the others could not. If for some of them it was a metter of SEO and rankings for others it was a metter of access.

So I decided to write this plugin...

This plugin will be useful for both - owners of the hosting site project leaves and for owners of the project.

For hosting site it will be useful because:

• Gives control over content shown to users who came onto the dead page;
• Allows redirecting users to a similar project or projects listing;
• Allows not to lose page ranks.

For project owners it will be useful because:

• Allows explaining the reason of project closure;
• Allows redirecting to a new project page.

To supply this the plugin supports the following modes:

• No redirection mode: in this mode the plugin just shows the specified message.
• Redirect to URL: in this mode the plugin redirects to the specified URL.
• Redirect to Redmine/ChiliProject: in this mode the plugin “transparently” redirects to another Redmine/ChiliProject.

To read more check this page.
To download the plugin check this page.