Flatten redirect chains step by step

Flatten redirect chains step by step
Each redirect is a full round-trip before real content loads — pure TTFB tax, often invisible until you trace it.

— Step 1: curl -sIL -w '%{url_effective} %{http_code} %{time_total}\n' to see every hop + cumulative time.
— Step 2: Common 3-hop chain: http -> https -> www -> trailing-slash. Collapse to one 301.
— Step 3: Rewrite internal links to the final URL so users never trigger the redirect at all.
— Step 4: Update sitemap + canonical to the destination.
— Step 5: Re-measure first-byte time on the entry URL.

Before | After: 3 hops 410ms -> 1 hop 130ms before HTML.

Takeaway: every redirect hop costs 80-300ms — your budget is one, ideally zero.