Chemo's Ultimate URL's

[anita]

Please help. I'm totally lost on what to do. If you take a look at the first page of my store and position your mouse over the word "login" near the top you can see that the link shown on the bottom looks correct, but when you actually click on login it goes to Sashbox.net

I have contacted my host for help, but I haven't heard back from them.

Anita

[kebeid]

Did you set your base URL in the sample .htaccess provided in the mod? Yes (that's the changing the /shop/ thing)

Is your Xampp set up to support mod_rewrite? - What's that.

Thanks for the quick reply Dr. Byte

Pete

[anita]

My problem was solved thanks to the wonderful Jim at Sashbox.
Anita

[zacheos]

I have found a real problem with the SEFU mod...

I cannot seem to get any form of 404 or 302 re-direct to work correctly with the .htaccess now. It seems that if you visit any false page at the site, you will see the home page, rather than the 404 page not found.

Have any of you been able to add 404 error handling to the .htaccess associated with the SEFU and have any success?

My site is here: sojournglass(dot)com

[zacheos]

If I use the standard 301 redirect line like this:

Redirect 301 /glass-balls.shtml http:// (WWW) .sojournglass.com/glass-balls-c-1.html
(I have altered this line to prevent linking from here)

Then the page is actually getting re-directed to the root domain. It seems that there is a problem with the other rules in place.

Also, using the standard 404 re-direct gets me nowhere... You can go to any random page in the site and it will display the home page.

This is actually a very bad thing for search engines.

Any help?

[zacheos]

Ok... so... I found a way around the 301 re-direct issue...

For anyone else that may have been having this trouble:

The re-direct code should actually read like this:

Redirect 301 /glass-balls.shtml http:// (WWW) .sojournglass.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1
I have altered the "www" to prevent this forum from linking to the site, though it should be written as a standard URL in your code.

Now that I have the 301 redirect issue solved... I am still searching for a way to have the 404 error pages handled correctly with the SEFU in place.

Currently if you go to mydomain.com/anything_random_written_here

You will see the home page and the URL will not be altered from what was typed into the URL bar.

This is a problem, as it would tell the engines that any broken link to your site is a duplicate of your home page.

Can anyone see what would be causing the re-write engine to see any random page as a normal page and show the home page content?

[zacheos]

Apparently this forum is not as heavily read as I thought!

In doing more tests on the 404 error problem with the SEFurls mod I have found that if you go to any non-existant page in the site, you will see the home page content.

I have found that this is due to the following section of the htaccess file:

# All other pages
# Don't rewrite real files or directories
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ index\.php?main_page=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

However, if this section is removed from the file, the engine has trouble with a number of EZ pages and other pages not already handled by the rewrite rules.

So... I am seeking a way to allow the site to properly handle 404 page not found errors while at the same time allowing for the random pages to be handled correctly.

It may seem like a strange problem, but if the site serves up the home page for every incorrect page request thrown at it, the engines may follow bad links and see them all as duplicates of the home page... This is very bad, and actually ruins the mod IMO.

Since we do not always have control over people linking to our sites incorrectly, as webmasters, we must ensure that our home page, or any other page, is not dished up to bad links. The 404 page must be shown instead.

If anyone has some insight into how this 404 error problem could be resolved please let me know.

[voltage]

You make some very interesting points. I never thought of it before, but it makes sense to have a 404 page with Ultimate SEO's. Let us know if you find a solution (I've been trying but no success yet).

[zacheos]

The only solution I have found so far is to create new re-write rules fore every page not covered by the bulk of the .htaccess file:

Things like the privacy page, contact page, EZ pages, etc...

Then remove the "all encompassing" section of the .htaccess.

Though this is not a great solution as it would require a new re-write condition for every page and may get complicated when a lot of added pages are created. Also this makes it nearly impossible for a person to set up the site for someone else using the mod without coming back to add to the .htaccess rules every time the person creates a new page.

The issue with the 404 is a serious one for sure. If you wanted to, it would be possible to link to a competitor using this mod with a ton of incorrect links for the engines to follow. When the engines find the duplicate home page copy at each link followed they will eventually trip a duplicate content filter on the site, causing serious damage to the site's rankings...

Though I am not advocating such action! Just bringing the problem to light.

I wish that a few people that developed the mod could look into this problem too.

It may be possible that a fix is totally doable from a hack perspective rather than a constant adjustment of the .htaccess rules.

[voltage]

Hey, try this! A simple solution that hasn't been tested much, but is working so far . . . put this at end of your htaccess file:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

Obviously this needs to be pointed towards your error page . . . and there are other error pages you might want to add:

401 - Authorization Required
400 - Bad request
403 - Forbidden
500 - Internal Server Error
404 - Wrong page

Let me know what you think.