How to handle pages I can't delete?

[grobro]

Hello Mozzers,

I am using wordpress and I have a small problem. I have two sites, I don't want but the dev of the theme told me I can't delete them.

/portfolio-items/

/faq-items/

The dev said he can't find a way to delete it because these pages just list faqs/portfolio posts. I don't have any of these posts so basically what I have are two sites with just the title "Portfolio items" and "FAQ Items". Furthermore the dev said these sites are auto-generated so he can't find a way to remove them.

I mean I don't believe that it's impossible, but if it is how should I handle them? They are indexed by search engines, should I remove them from the index and block them from robots.txt?

Thanks in advance.

[Hutch42]

If those pages are being created due to those being tag options you should try deleting the tag to see if it stops wordpress from generating the page.

[Keszi]

Hi,

Quite interesting what you developer says There is no such thing in Wordpress as Impossible, but let's say if there is no other way to handle it, you could download the Yoast plugin (wordpress seo) and set those pages to noindex, follow and from robots.txt disallow access to the two pages.

Still I would check what is causing the "auto-generated" pages. If it is a bought theme, go ask the original developer. I'm quite sure that there will be an easy way to fix it. (drop me a private message and we can check it out together)

Gr., Keszi

Later Edit: Hint: Maybe you (or your developer) should check into the custom post types.

[JakeMatulewicz]

You an either block them via the robots.txt file or just 301 redirect them to the sites homepage or an applicable page.

I would just 301 redirect them.

Thanks,

Jake

[TheeDigital]

Where are they linked FROM? Are they pulled in a menu or a sidebar or are they linked internally somewhere else? If they are not being used, you simply need to delete links to them and they will disappear.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

Just checking, any luck with this? Can you clarify what you mean by "sites"? Those both look like sub-folders? Can you explain a little more in context how they fit into whatever domain you're on?

[grobro]

Thanks for all the answers! Sorry, I didn't have a chance to respond earlier.

Unfortunately, I still couldn't fix this. I talked to the original devs (on their support forums) and they couldn't help me further with this. It's about these 3 pages:

/themefusion_es_groups/group1/

/portfolio-items/

/faq-items/

I don't know what else I could try..

Best regards!

[evolvingSEO]

If you can't delete them, you should probably 301 redirect them to the most similar page, or just the homepage. You can redirect them in the .htaccess file or use a redirection plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

[grobro]

They told me this:

---

Salman wrote:

Hi There,

These are not pages or posts which you can remove by just clicking on a button. These are custom posts types and you can not directly remove slugs within current setup. You have following options though.

1. Add some code to unregister these custom post types.

2. Use a plugin to re-write slugs

3. Use .htaccess to redirect users when this URL is access. This might work

BEGIN REMOVE SLUG CUSTOM POST TYPE RULES

RewriteRule ^portfolio-items/(.+)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^faq-items/(.+)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]

END REMOVE SLUG CUSTOM POST TYPE RULES

I hope you understand that the solution you need is not possible with our current set of options and will require some customization of the theme. We’d love to help you with this customization but we are only able to provide support for basic theme issues and bug fixes. We do provide support for small customizations but unfortunately this request is beyond that.

---

There aren't any similar pages, I guess I 301 redirect them to the home page. It's three pages, will this have any negative effects?

Thanks for the help, highly appreciated!

[evolvingSEO]

Great - the info helps. To be honest, this isn't a huge issue if left alone, or if you do the redirect. But if you're worried about users landing on the wrong page, you can 301 redirect to the homepage and that should be just fine.

[grobro]

Thank you for your answer! Can I use this code in the .htaccess?:

Redirect 301 /portfolio-items/ http://mysite.com

[evolvingSEO]

Most likely, but I would double check with your developer - since I might be unaware of anything out of the ordinary!

[grobro]

The code worked fine, thanks again for your help!

[evolvingSEO]

great!