Help with 301 redirect code

[Paul_MC]

Hi,

I can't work out how to make this one work and would apreciate if someone could help.
i have a series of folders from a old site that are in the structure:
/c/123456/bags.html   (the "123456" changes and is any series of 6 digit numbers), and the "bags.html" changes depending on the product.
I need that to be 301 redirected to the following format:
/default/bags/bags.html

[SEOAndy]

ok this needs clarifying

so your old urls want to be of the format /default/category/bags.html yes?

does the category relate to the 6 digit number in some way?

Are you using a shopping care of some kind or is this a bespoke system?

[TomRayner]

Hi there

First of all, does your site use an .htaccess file? This is probably the most common solution used to implement 301 redirects.  The SEOMoz guide to redirection is really useful in explaining how to implement redirects for apache servers and others.

These three generators can create the code for you, but it's very important to learn how the .htaccess file works before trying to implement it. Therefore, you should acquaint yourself fully with the Moz guide linked above.

Alternatively, if your site is running WordPress, you can setup 301 redirects very easily with the Yoast SEO plugin.

Hope these resources help.

[Paul_MC]

thanks guys.
Andy...
yes, i need the new format to be /default/category/bags.html (but the bags.html will vary with whatever the original product is).
The category has no relation to the new category. It was generated by a old cms system and seems to fluctuate.
Yes, it is a Magento shopping cart

Tom,
yes, it is .htaccess>
I have added some other 301 redirects successfully, but can't work out how to change the 6 digit category, while still making sure the end product (eg bags.html) redirects to bags.html in the new structure.

I hope that makes sense?

Thanks
Paul

[SEOAndy]

oh erm sounds a little odd set up - maybe worth trying http://shop.ecomdev.org/url-rewrite-indexer.html

[Paul_MC]

Thanks Andy, i'll take a look.

I'm no htaccess guru, but was hoping that there was some sort of wildcard that could:
find "any product" (eg bags.html) in categories /c/123456/ and redirect to /default/bags/

i just can't get my head around it. Is there a * or ? or combination? as it would need to pick up the changing 6 digits

[SEOAndy]

it would be hard to do without knowing the system really well, though that plugin maybe able to help. The reason is that if those codes change they could mean any category - the last bit is likely not an issue of product name as url, but the category bit isn't so easy - unless it can be ignored and pulled from the CMS - again not being a magento expert I don't know how this would be done. sorry.

[Paul_MC]

no worries Andy, I really appreciate you trying

[Aleyda]

Hi Paul,

As Andy mentioned earlier, the complexity here comes by the fact that these IDs cannot be simply removed since they play a role in the Magento product/category system.

The first step would be that you identify how these are generated to identify the best way to optimize it to become relevant or at least doesn't add more depth and complexity in the URL structure.

I've seen that there's a URL rewrite area in Magento with some system configuration options that you might want to take a look here and to this in-depth guide explaining Magento URL rewrites.

I've also seen that a similar question has been asked in Stackoverflow and as you can see the potential alternatives discussed here goes into Magento's system configuration.

Hope this helps!

Aleyda