Magento Controllers: Redirecting to External URLs

Heads up! This article was written over [[elapsed]]. While it may still be helpful, please verify any information, as my perspectives and practices may have evolved.

Just a quick one. If you need to redirect to a URL outside of your regular Magento Base then its no use using:

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$this->_redirect($path)

..instead use:

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$this->_redirectUrl($url)

The only time to use the _redirect variant would be to redirect to an internal module/controller/action/param1/param1value page, where as _redirectUrl is geared towards your external URLs.

Back to work!