Redirect to previous page in Magento after logout

By default Magento sends a user to a logoutSuccess page after they choose to log out. This is ‘hard-baked’ into the Customer controller’s logout action in the line $this->_redirect('*/*/logoutSuccess');. You can choose to set the Javascript redirect in the template customer/logout.phtml, but a better idea is to bypass the logout success page entirely.

The way to do this is to override the logoutAction() method in the customerController:

1. Rewrite the customer controller as documented here
2. Override the logoutAction() method
3. Set the redirect as below

    <?php
    require_once 'Mage/Customer/controllers/AccountController.php';


    class EdmondsCommerce_LogoutRedirect_AccountController extends Mage_Customer_AccountController {
        public function logoutAction()
        {
            $url = Mage::getSingleton('core/session')->getLastUrl();
            $this->_getSession()->logout()
                ->setBeforeAuthUrl(Mage::getUrl());
    
            $this->_redirectUrl($url);
        }
    }