Hi fellow MediaWiki sysops,

Does anyone have any clever (easy? automatic?) ways to build large quantities of page redirects?

For instance, to sort pages and sub pages we'll probably name them "0700", "0800" and so on - chapters. Then we'll have individual page in each chapter - "0700/0701" and "0700/0702.1(a)" and so on. But, if someone types "700" into the [Go][Search] I want them to go to "0700". And if they type "702.1a" (or "702.1(a)"), I'd like them to go immediately to page "0700/0702.1(a)".

Sure, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Redirection says to build a page for each synonym and put on it:

#redirect [[pagename]]

I note: "... to avoid problems with infinite recursion, if the redirect target is another redirect page, the second redirect is not applied..." so I have to build a separate page for each redirect, right?

For example, I now have page "700", so I "move" it ( see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Moving_a_page ) to "0700" and that works, giving 2 pages, with old page "700" seamlessly redirecting to new page "0700".

Has anyone seen or developed any other ways than building a redirect page for each synonym? What do you all do to give your users easy access to look up information and go directly to the answer page?

A look-up substitution index might work (smells like a hard-coded php array hooked extension?). I think I'm after having the user type their familiar name of the page they want to see (the name that they are using for ancient DOS, HTML, or PDF resources) and see the formally-named wiki page come up immediately - and there may be more than one informal name by which they may try to get there, by the way.

Thanks!

PS - Again, a link to an http://www.MediaWiki.org answer would be great - I couldn't find any but the links mentioned above!