HTTP redirect spreadsheet to nginx

Problem: A digital agency insisted on delivering a web site using a custom Django CMS, so we can't use the normal Wordpress plugin for setting up redirects for URLs from the old site.

Solution: A Ruby script for transforming our spreadsheet of redirects into nginx redirects.

Input data

This script expects an Excel .xlsx spreadsheet with the redirects in the first sheet. It expects to find the original URLs in a column titled, "old URL", and the new URLs in a column titled "new URL".

Running

Step 1: (Optional) Install RVM

https://rvm.io/rvm/install

You might like to run Ruby in some other way. Have fun with that.

Step 2: Install Ruby

I used 2.4 and that's recorded in the .rvmrc file. Any 2.x version will probably work.

Step 3: Install Bundler

gem install bundler

Step 4: Install gem bundle

bundle install

Step 5: Run the script

ruby transform.rb spreadsheet.xlsx