Describe the feature you'd like

Redirect from 404 to 301, a page when the book/chapter title change

Describe the benefits this would bring to existing BookStack users

No more 404 ! When page/chapter/book titles change.

Can the goal of this request already be achieved via other means?

Do NOT USE {SLUG} routing, USE permalink /link/{ID}
But the actual chapter/book slug history is lost !

Have you searched for an existing open/closed issue?

• I have searched for existing issues and none cover my fundamental request

How long have you been using BookStack?

1 to 5 years

Additional context

BookStack currently no support for recovering from slug changes. Thanks to PR #5826, which introduced a middleware that redirects requests containing old page slugs to the stable permalink (/link/{id}) by leveraging the page_revisions table. This is a valuable improvement that handles cases where only the page slug has changed.

However, this solution is incomplete because it does not address slug changes at the book or chapter level—a common and equally disruptive scenario.

🧩 The Core Problem

In BookStack, a page’s public URL is structured as:

• /book-slug/page-slug (if not in a chapter), or
• /book-slug/chapter-slug/page-slug (if in a chapter).

If either the book or chapter slug is modified, all existing URLs to pages within that book or chapter break permanently, even if the page slug itself remains unchanged. For example:

• Original URL: /project-docs/api-guide/getting-started
• After renaming the book “Project Docs” → “Product Docs”:
  /project-docs/... returns a 404, despite the page still existing at /product-docs/api-guide/getting-started.

This happens because:

• BookStack does not store historical slugs for books or chapters (no book_revisions or chapter_revisions tables exist).
• The page_revisions table includes book_slug (as it was at revision time) but not chapter_slug.
• Therefore, it is impossible to reconstruct the full historical URL when a book or chapter has been renamed.

As a result, PR #5826 cannot redirect these broken URLs, because the middleware only matches the page slug and assumes the current book/chapter path is valid—which it is not if those containers were renamed.

🎯 Proposed Solution

To enable complete and reliable redirection of all historical URLs, we propose adding revision tracking for books and chapters by introducing:

• A book_revisions table (columns: book_id, slug, name, created_at)
• A chapter_revisions table (columns: chapter_id, slug, name, created_at)

This would allow:

1. Accurate reconstruction of any past URL (e.g., /old-book/old-chapter/old-page).
2. A 404 handler or enhanced middleware to issue 301 redirects from any historical path to the current canonical URL.
3. Full alignment with BookStack’s existing page revision model, ensuring consistency across all entity types.

🔍 Why This Matters

• SEO: Prevents loss of search engine ranking due to 404s.
• User Trust: Shared or bookmarked links remain functional.
• Enterprise Reliability: External systems (CI/CD, monitoring, integrations) can safely link to BookStack content.
• Long-Term Viability: BookStack is often used as a permanent knowledge base—its URLs should be equally permanent or recoverable.

✅ Backward Compatibility & Implementation

This change would be fully backward-compatible:

• New tables are optional for redirection logic; existing installs remain unaffected.
• The feature would only activate when historical slugs are needed (e.g., on 404).
• It follows the same pattern already established by page_revisions.

🙏 Conclusion

While PR #5826 was a great first step, true URL stability requires preserving slug history for all path components—not just pages. Adding revision tables for books and chapters would close this gap and make BookStack significantly more robust as a documentation platform.

Thank you for considering this enhancement!