Q: How can I test my redirects BEFORE launch so I'm not debugging live in front of real traffic?

Q: How can I test my redirects BEFORE launch so I'm not debugging live in front of real traffic?

Exactly the right question to ask first instead of after — you're ahead of most people.

Short answer: test the rules against staging using a hosts-file override or a header, so you exercise the real redirect logic without going live.

Long answer: you don't have to wait for cutover. Two reliable ways to dry-run:

— point your local hosts file at the new server's IP, then run your full old-URL list through a crawler and check every status and final destination
— or have the new server accept a test header / preview domain so you can curl the real rules

Feed it your actual redirect map plus a sample of high-traffic and weird-edge old URLs (query strings, uppercase, trailing slashes).

Next step: take your top 50 old URLs by traffic, run them through the staging rules, and confirm each returns a single 301 to the correct final URL — no chains, no loops, no 404s — before you flip DNS.