What Is Wildcard Redirect?

Why It Matters

When you move a domain, you don’t just need to forward example.com — you also need to handle www.example.com, blog.example.com, shop.example.com, and every other subdomain that might have inbound links or traffic.

Without wildcard redirects, you’d need a separate rule for every subdomain. Wildcard forwarding catches them all with one rule: *.old-domain.com → new-domain.com.

This is essential for brand migrations and mergers & acquisitions where the old domain may have had dozens of subdomains.

How It Works

A wildcard redirect uses a * character to match any subdomain:

• *.example.com → matches blog.example.com, shop.example.com, anything.example.com
• Combined with path forwarding: *.old.com/path → new.com/path

At the DNS level, this requires a wildcard CNAME record or a wildcard A record:

*.old-domain.com  CNAME  forward.domain-forward.com

The redirect server then matches incoming requests against the wildcard rule and responds with a 301 redirect.

Common Use Cases

• Post-rebrand cleanup: Forward every subdomain of the old brand to the new domain
• Development/staging: Forward *.staging.example.com to production
• Regional subdomains: Forward *.example.co.uk to example.com
• Unused subdomains: Catch mis-typed or outdated subdomains and redirect them
• Catch-all redirect: Forward everything — any subdomain, any path — to a single destination

How Domain Forward Handles This

Wildcard forwarding is available on the Ultimate plan. Set up one wildcard DNS record and one forwarding rule — Domain Forward catches every subdomain and provisions SSL certificates automatically for each one. Each redirected subdomain works over HTTPS with no extra configuration.