Redirects & 404 Errors

[marisolmarketing]

Hi everyone,

I'm probably missing some GLARING error here, but I'm hoping you can help me! We recently built a new website on Wordpress and attempted to use a redirect plugin to take care of some old pages. The issue we are having though, is that when you click an old link you are not automatically redirected and instead are given a 404 error page. Then, when you try to view another page (by clicking a navigation item), every pages shows a 404 error. I implemented a redirect plugin, however it seems to start to work then still throws the 404 page.

I believe this has something to do with the htaccess file which has the standard WP rewrite info in there...

The way the old site was setup was kind of janky, so wondering if it's on that side or if I'm just going crazy. An old URL example would be http://orchards inn.com/index.php/specials and the new page is http://orchardsinn.com/special-offers. Sometimes the redirect seems to work, and others it actually throws a 404 page, then every other page in the navigation is 404'd as well.

Your help is GREATLY appreciated!!

[FedeEinhorn]

Hi, can you please tell us your URL so we can look closer?

It appears to be the plugin you are using, probably you need to fix some parts of the code, I'm shooting to guess here... but you can probably set some redirect rules before the wordpress's rules to manage the old pages and then remove the plugin, which is causing the 404s on the 404s.

Hope that helps.

[evolvingSEO]

Hmmm this could be tricky once it's starts becoming unclear what redirects were done where etc. I'd take a clean slate approach - note that to do this you have to have the OLD URLs somewhere - either in analytics, an old crawl, archive.org, webmaster tools etc;

1. Gather up ALL old URLs from the sources listed above (old crawls, analytics, webmaster tools etc)
2. Prepare any 301 redirects you need. I recommend using the .htaccess file. It's much easier to keep track of and have it all in once place.
3. Disable the redirect plugin
4. Remove any redirects from .htaccess
5. Test the site to make sure they are all gone
6. Put your new redirects all back into the .htaccess file

Now in theory you should have redirects ONLY in the .htaccess file. Test the site by crawling it. Test some of the old URLs and make sure they redirect.cYou can also put your old back links into Screaming Frog in list mode and check them.

I find the redirect plugin is OK but it's best to shut off any automatic creation of redirects.

[marisolmarketing]

Hi Dan,

Thank you so much for taking the time to be so thorough in your answer! I really appreciate it. I attempted the htaccess redirects a little while back, but maybe I was doing them wrong. I have all of the old URLs in a csv, and they will all need to be redirected to new pages on the new site.

When I do the redirects in htaccess, they should look like this, correct?

Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/

Also, If I have a few old pages (i.e. old photo gallery pages or a contact page), how can I redirect them all to the same new page? I think that was where I was having issues, but couldn't figure out what to do.

Again, I really appreciate your help, so thanks in advance!

[evolvingSEO]

Hey There

Yes that looks like the right format for 301. Make sure you're putting that below the default wordpress stuff.

If you want to redirect a bunch of pages all to one page you just do it like this;

Redirect 301 /photos-1/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/

Redirect 301 /photos-2/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/

Redirect 301 /photos-3/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/

etc...

[marisolmarketing]

Awesome Dan, thanks again for helping me out!

I implemented what you suggested and I'm still having the same issue. I think it has to do with the way the old URLs were setup, which included "index.php" before every folder (i.e. http://orchardsinn.com/index.php/specials)

When I implement the redirect:

Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/

Then clear my cache and attempt to click the old link, it takes me to the site with a 404 error page. Then, when I try to navigate to another page via the navigation, they all return 404 errors.

Any thoughts?