Canonical Issues - 4 different urls for my forum!

[sherwood]

I've just discovered that my forum has canonical issues. All the following urls resolve without redirection to a single url:

http://www.mydomain.com/forum/
http://www.mydomain.com/forum/index.php
http://mydomain.com/forum/
http://mydomain.com/forum/index.php

Obviously this is undesirable and means that external link juice is not consolidated to a single url.

- Is this something I should fix by htaccess or is it somewhere in vbseo?
- Would using the rel canonical tag be a good idea?
- Should I set up a 301 redirect for all these after I make the change?
- Which of the 4 url options is the better, if any?

[Brian Cummiskey]

[How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects - vBulletin SEO Forums

vBSEO Panel -> SEO Functions -> Homepage Settings -> Define Homepage Aliases :

index.php index.php?

[sherwood]

Thanks Brian, all fixed. I had the correct lines in htaccess but they were commented out

I note that the vbseo homepage alias setting 301 redirects forum/index.php to forum/

but regarding the non www to www should I now go ahead and create a 301 redirect for that or is the htaccess sufficient to count as a permanent move?

I do have links pointing to the non www and want to consolidate the link juice to www. obviously.

[Brian Cummiskey]

The htaccess will take care of it. The alias is for the page only, index.php and / being the same thing, which will not trigger until its on the correct www version already

[sherwood]

ok, thanks again.

[sherwood]

Quick follow up on this one.

I've also discovered urls of the form
http://www.mydomain.com/forum/index.php?c=5 (5 can be replaced by any number)
also resolve.

I do have index.php? defined in my homepage aliases, but it doesnt seem to redirect urls as above.

I tried adding index.php?c=5 but it doesnt seem to have any effect.

[Andrés Durán Hewitt]

Hello Stephen,

Please try to enter this Custom Rewrite Rule:

'^index\.php\?c=[0-9]+$' => '/'

And try to reproduce the issue again.

[sherwood]

Thanks, we're halfway there I think

That redirects:
http://www.mydomain.com/forum/index.php?c=5
to
http://www.mydomain.com/forum/?c=5

[Andrés Durán Hewitt]

Are you sure you wrote the rule I supplied within vBSEO CP -> Custom Rewrite Rules?. It should work.

[sherwood]

Yes, I think so. Please see final line of attachment.

[Andrés Durán Hewitt]

Did you deleted the "index.php?c=5" you entered in "Home Page Aliases"?.

[sherwood]

No I didnt Working fine now thanks!

[Andrés Durán Hewitt]

Great! .

[sherwood]

I have a similar issue to previous. My above comments were in relation to Vbulletin 3.8, I now have a second forum but using 4.1.8

I have successfully redirected non www to www but I still have 2 different urls that both resolve:

http://www.domain.com/forum/forum.php
and
http://www.domain.com/forum/

I've added a Custom Rewrite Rule as in post 7 above (using forum.php instead of index.php) and made sure there are no home page aliases listed but I'm still seeing both urls resolve without redirection.

[Brian Cummiskey]

for vb4, it's a little different...
Remove forum/forum.php from Breadcrumb - vBulletin SEO Forums