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For developers and operations teams, domain redirects represent a recurring pain point—caught between complex cloud configurations and disruptive developer requests. Traditional approaches force teams into tedious AWS console navigation or create workflow bottlenecks when non-technical colleagues need simple redirects. Leonardo Trapani's recently open-sourced Rediredge tackles this friction head-on with an elegant technical solution.

The Redirect Dilemma

Most organizations face two problematic paths:
1. The Cloud Configuration Maze: Endless clicks through AWS services (CloudFront, Certificate Manager) requiring DNS changes and YAML tweaks
2. The Developer Dependency: Marketing teams stuck waiting days for engineering resources to update configuration files

"Redirects are a product concern, not a DevOps ticket," Trapani asserts. His solution? A self-hostable system where non-technical users manage redirects through a dashboard while engineers get lightweight infrastructure.

Architecture Breakdown

Rediredge employs a clean separation of concerns:

Control Plane (Next.js):
- Intuitive dashboard for domain/redirect management
- Persists rules to PostgreSQL
- Implements authentication

Data Plane (Go):
- Stateless redirector handling TLS via autocert (ACME)
- Reads rules from Redis
- Returns 30x responses in sub-millisecond time

// Simplified architecture flow
Client → Go Redirector (TLS + Redis HGET) → 30x Response
                ↓
             Redis (read model)
                ↑
         Sync Worker ← Postgres ← Dashboard

The magic lies in Redis optimization—each redirect rule stores all necessary metadata for instant lookup without parsing:

{
  "redirect:example.com:cal": {
    "to": "https://calendly.com/acme",
    "status": 308,
    "preservePath": false,
    "preserveQuery": true,
    "version": 3
  }
}

Technical Innovations

  1. Outbox Pattern Implementation:

    • All dashboard changes land in PostgreSQL outbox table
    • Sync worker applies updates to Redis idempotently
    • Ensures consistency and durability during failures

  2. Zero-Cold-Start Performance:

    • Go's native compilation enables instant responses
    • Eliminates Lambda-style cold starts affecting serverless solutions

  3. Automatic HTTPS:

    • Built-in ACME (HTTP-01) support via autocert
    • No reverse proxy required

Deployment Flexibility

# Self-hosted Docker Compose example
services:
  redirector:
    image: ghcr.io/leonardotrapani/rediredge-redirector
    ports:
      - "80:5498"
      - "443:5499"
    environment:
      - REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379
  redis:
    image: redis:alpine

Teams choose between:
- Hosted Service: Fully managed infrastructure
- Self-Hosted: Single-command deployment with persistent control plane

Unlike generic URL shorteners, Rediredge preserves brand authority by hosting redirects on your domains—critical for SEO and user trust. As Trapani notes: "Search engines see yourcompany.com, not bit.ly."

The project's pre-alpha release on GitHub invites community collaboration, potentially reshaping how teams approach what Trapani calls "invisible infrastructure." By treating redirects as product-level concerns rather than infrastructure tasks, Rediredge exemplifies the growing trend of developer-focused solutions that eliminate operational tax.