Temporary Redirects on Magento

[bradkrussell]

I've recently taken over a client who uses the Magento platform and there was definitely a duplicate issue with his homepage. It redirected www to non www, however the canonical tag was setup wrong and pointing to the www version.

When I looked at OSE for both versions the non www has only 7 linking domains and a page authority of 32. The www version has 24 linking domains and page authority of 39. As the domain is fairly new, I decided to redirect the non www to www and keep the canonical the same. (I changed the internal linking structure etc).

When I run both URLs through this tool: http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-... it's returning a whole bunch of 302, rather than 301 redirects. What's the deal with that? Is that a Magento setting that I can fix or something a little harder?

I'm not sure if it's proper etiquette to post the URL of a client, so if that would help and is OK, please let me know.

Thanks

[riplash]

Hey Brad.. firstly, posting client URLs is fine as far as SEOmoz Q&A is concerned, however, it's entirely up to you in terms of client privacy.

Magento has a setting in the back-end for solving www/non-www canonicalisation (System > Configuration > Web > URL options). You'll see a setting for redirect type ("Auto-redirect to Base URL"), and obviously you'll want to ensure it's set to 301 rather than 302.

[bradkrussell]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the superfast answer, appreciate it.

OK I switched that option from Yes to No. This fixed the temporary redirect problem. However, now both the www and non www versions are returning a 200 response (see http://www.ragepank.com/redirect-check/).

Is this an easy fix in Magento? I know in other systems such as Volusion we don't have access to htaccess. I'm guessing I can't do anything about this and I just have to worry about setting up the correct canonical?

Thanks

[riplash]

You should have three options in that dropdown.. No, Yes (302 Found), and Yes (301 Moved Permanently). 301 should be the third option on the list.

[bradkrussell]

Haha I only have two options (Yes or No):

| <label for="web_url_redirect_to_base">Redirect to Base URL if requested URL doesn't match it</label> | I.e. redirect from http://example.com/store/ to http://www.example.com/store/ |

[riplash]

Hey Brad.. that is strange. I guess the next logical question would be which version of Magento is the site running?

[bradkrussell]

Hi Neil,

1.5.1.0.

Do you have much  experience in rewriting htaccess files for Magento? I assume this article pretty much sums it up?

http://www.crearegroup-ecommerce.co.uk/blog/e-commerce-seo/htaccess-rewrites-for-magento-shops.php

Cheers

[riplash]

Wouldn't call myself an expert by any stretch, however, I've have set up and still run a few Magento stores.

The reason I asked which version your site is running, is because I believe they rolled out the 301 option in version 1.4.2.0 (based on the release notes I checked). Definitely strange you don't see it when using version 1.5.1.0.

You can solve it instead, as you rightly point out, using a rewrite rule in .htaccess, like the second extra rule from the Creare article:-

RewriteCond %{http_host} ^yourdomain.co.uk [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,NC]

I don't usually find I need this, because Magento solves the www issue with that 301 dropdown menu option which is missing for you.

I don't generally need the first extra rule from that article, either:-

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

When I switch on Web Server Rewrites in the Magento backend, and correct the Magento root (if necessary) in .htaccess, as described in that article, the removal of index.php from URLs is usually solved. If you do still have the index.php problem, however, you could solve it in .htaccess too.

I'm definitely not an apache/mod_rewrite expert so I can't vouch for the syntax necessarily, however it certainly looks correct.

If I were you (or your client), I'd also want to get to the bottom of why I don't see that 301 option in Magento, as it could be symptomatic of an incomplete upgrade in the past. It could of course, be something else obvious which I'm missing - definitely worthy of further investigation though.

[james.rose]

Been looking for this for ages.

Thanks