Magento Controllers: Redirecting to External URLs

Heads up! This article was written over 15 years ago. 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!