Question

Is it possible to redirect some specific category to a static page?

So far I tried to do it with custom redirect but it complains about non-unique request path. Target path is disabled when editing category rewrite too

Answer 1

Yes it’s possible but not without writing some custom code and adding an observer.

Without entering in much detail you could :

public function observe($observer) {
   $request = $observer['controller_action']->getRequest();
   $requestUrl = $request->getRequestUri();

   if($requestUrl == 'mycategoryname'){
       $destinationUrl = 'http://www.mysite.com/static_page';
       $response = Mage::app()->getResponse();
       $response->setRedirect($destinationUrl, 301);
       $response->sendResponse();
       exit;
   }
 }

And on the config.xml you are going to need

<frontend>
  <events>
    <controller_action_predispatch>
       <observers>
         <mycompany_mymodule_model_myclass>
          <type>singleton</type>
          <class>mycompany_mymodule_model_myclass</class>
          <method>observe</method>
         </mycompany_mymodule_model_myclass>
       </observers>
     </controller_action_predispatch>
   </events>
 </frontend>