Customizing Your Frontend Projects with hollacloud.json

When you host a website on HollaCloud, you can control how it routes traffic — redirects, rewrites, custom headers, and trailing slashes — by adding a single file called hollacloud.json to your project. If you've used vercel.json before, this will feel right at home.

You don't need this file for a normal site. It's only there for when you want to customize routing.

Adding the file

1. Create a file named hollacloud.json in the root of your project (the same folder as your package.json, index.html, or hugo.toml). For a monorepo, place it at the root of the project path you publish.

2. Add your rules (see the examples below).

3. Republish your project from the dashboard — your config is applied on every publish.

Changes only take effect after you republish. Editing the file in your repo isn't enough on its own.

A quick example

Here's a minimal file that sends visitors from an old URL to a new one:

{
  "redirects": [
    {
      "source": "/old-pricing",
      "destination": "/pricing"
    }
  ]
}

Every section is optional, so you only include the parts you actually need.

Redirects

Redirects send visitors to a different URL. The address bar changes.

{
  "redirects": [
    {
      "source": "/old-blog",
      "destination": "/blog"
    },
    {
      "source": "/docs/:path*",
      "destination": "/help/:path*"
    },
    {
      "source": "/sale",
      "destination": "/summer-sale",
      "statusCode": 302
    },
    {
      "source": "/chat",
      "destination": "https://discord.gg/your-invite"
    }
  ]
}

• source — the path to match. It must start with /.

• destination — where to send the visitor. Use an internal path (/blog) or a full external URL (https://...).

• By default a redirect is permanent (301). For a temporary one, add "statusCode": 302 (307 and 308 work too).

Rewrites

A rewrite serves a different file while keeping the visitor's URL the same. This is handy for single-page apps:

{
  "rewrites": [
    {
      "source": "/app/:path*",
      "destination": "/index.html"
    }
  ]
}

Now any URL under /app/... shows your index.html, and your client-side router takes over from there.

Custom headers

Add response headers to specific paths — for caching or security, for example:

{
  "headers": [
    {
      "source": "/assets/:path*",
      "headers": [
        {
          "key": "Cache-Control",
          "value": "public, max-age=86400"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Trailing slashes

Control whether your URLs end with a /:

{
  "trailingSlash": true
}

• true — /about redirects to /about/

• false — /about/ redirects to /about

• Leave it out to keep URLs exactly as visitors type them.

If you set "trailingSlash": true, write your redirect source paths with the trailing slash (for example "/old-page/"). The slash is added first, so a source without it won't match. When in doubt, leave trailingSlash out unless you really need it.

Lowercase URLs

Redirect visitor-facing paths to lowercase:

{
  "lowercaseUrls": true
}

With this enabled, /BtC redirects to /btc.

Query strings and static files with extensions are preserved.

When lowercase URLs are enabled, write your redirect, rewrite, and header source paths in lowercase. URL normalization happens before those rules run.

Matching patterns

Two tokens are available in source and destination:

• :name — matches one path segment. /users/:id matches /users/42, but not /users/42/posts.

• :path* — matches the rest of the path. /docs/:path* matches /docs/a/b/c.

You can reuse a captured value in the destination, like "/help/:path*".

Full regular expressions aren't supported — only :name and :path*. This keeps your site fast and secure.

Full example

Here's a complete file that uses every feature together:

{
  "version": 1,
  "lowercaseUrls": true,
  "trailingSlash": false,
  "redirects": [
    {
      "source": "/old-blog",
      "destination": "/blog"
    },
    {
      "source": "/docs/:path*",
      "destination": "/help/:path*"
    },
    {
      "source": "/u/:id",
      "destination": "/users/:id"
    },
    {
      "source": "/sale",
      "destination": "/summer-sale",
      "statusCode": 302
    },
    {
      "source": "/chat",
      "destination": "https://discord.gg/your-invite"
    }
  ],
  "rewrites": [
    {
      "source": "/app/:path*",
      "destination": "/index.html"
    }
  ],
  "headers": [
    {
      "source": "/assets/:path*",
      "headers": [
        {
          "key": "Cache-Control",
          "value": "public, max-age=86400"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "source": "/:path*",
      "headers": [
        {
          "key": "X-Frame-Options",
          "value": "DENY"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Good to know

• Rules are applied in this order: trailing slash → redirects → rewrites → your files → headers.

• Each section can hold up to 400 rules, and the file must be under 256 KB.

• If hollacloud.json isn't valid, your publish fails with a message telling you what to fix — your live site stays untouched.

• The file itself is never served to visitors (a request for /hollacloud.json returns 404).