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How to automatically redirect all URLs to Pretty URLs?

AristaPAristaP New
in Vanilla 2.0 - 2.8

Hi,

Now that Pretty URLs are kind of mandatory starting from version 2.3, I have enabled them in my forum.

The thing is that I thought all URLs would automatically be redirected to the new, pretty URLs, but that's not the case. And now I've got two URLs for every page. For example:

http://domain.com/discussion/28766/title-goes-here

http://domain.com/index.php?p=/discussion/28766/title-goes-here

(the two URLs lead to the same page)

I'm not an SEO expert, but I guess Google won't like that at all and might see that as duplicated content, which might lead to penalization, etc.

Is there a way to automatically redirect all URLs to Pretty URLs?

Thank you.

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Comments

  • LincLinc Admin

    Vanilla utilizes canonical URL meta tags to tell search engines which URL is the correct one, which means it's not marked as duplicated content. A 301 redirect shouldn't be necessary. If you wanted, you could probably implement one purely in your htaccess file.

  • AristaPAristaP New

    @Linc said:
    Vanilla utilizes canonical URL meta tags to tell search engines which URL is the correct one, which means it's not marked as duplicated content.

    Thanks for your reply, @Linc. I appreciate it.

    I never noticed the canonical thing. Has it been there all the time? I mean, since I was using version 2.2.1 and non-pretty URLs, I wonder whether the canonical URL feature was working already and showing the URLs without the index.php?p= part.

  • K17K17 ✭✭✭

    @AristaP PrettyURLs are available since Vanilla 2.0 (or 1.* but not sure) so I think canonical URL was already here.

  • labastrolabastro New

    Hello.

    I am using version 3.3 and I have the same problem as @AristaP .

    Google indexes many urls with /index.php?p=/discussions/ and don't always select the right urls.

    However, canonical URLs are displayed correctly on pages.

    Is there a correct way to redirect (301) these urls to canonical urls?


    Thank you for your help.

  • BleistivtBleistivt Moderator

    @labastro

    However, canonical URLs are displayed correctly on pages.

    Then it should just take some time for Google to index them correctly.

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  • labastrolabastro New
    edited September 2020

    Thank you for your answer.

    I migrated to Vanilla last January, I find it a bit long (I have several thousand pages indexed with /index.php?p=/discussions/ and /index.php?p=/categories/).

    This is the reason why I am looking for a solution to redirect permanently these threads.

  • BleistivtBleistivt Moderator

    Redirect rules will be different depending on the server software you are using (apache, nginx, ...)

    What are you using?

    Google indexes many urls with /index.php?p=/discussions/ and don't always select the right urls.

    However, canonical URLs are displayed correctly on pages.

    The canonicals are correct even on pages that look like /index.php?p=... , right?

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  • labastrolabastro New

    I am using Apache on a dedicated server.

    The canonicals are correct even on pages that look like /index.php?p=... , right?

    Yes.

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