#1081 – Popup URLs

Hi

1 - 404 not recorded: the 404s are not recorded either because
- you have disabled 404 recording under the Advanced tab of sh404SEF configuration
- more likely: because you don't use the sh404SEF error page. If I go to http://xxxx.ie/tiles-219/tilesxxxxxxxxxxx.html, I see regular page, with a 200 http status code.

That's very, very bad from a SEO standpoint and wonder how you've achieved that!

Does that ring a bell?

Rgds

Hi

According to the documentation, the __404__ article and the shCustom Content category should be published and not renamed in any way. That's the most common source of the 404 error page not being displayed.
Then you have to look at the "Error page" tab of configuration, and see if anything departs from the default (documentation).

As for the popup, they look like relative links:

<a id="3" class="team_round bumpbox" href="/^team179" rel="842-442">
	
<img height="251" width="179" src="/images/meet-the-contract-team/thumb-paul.png"></a>

Of course, ^team179 is an invalid link so that can only generate 404s when Google crawls it.

However, I'm not convinced this is the problem you're seeing. http://xxxx.ie/TileStyle-Contracts-Team/kobus-louw.html?pop=0 is nowhere to be found on that page, and in addition, if it yields a 404, then google will soon drop it from its index.

How are those popups created and why don't they have the usual href="javascript: void(0)" links to avoid crawling by search engines?

Rgds

Hi

You said that the "shCustom Content category should be published ". I cannot find this option anywhere in the settings. We have an older version 4.4.6.2271 of the component so we don't have those options which are shown in the documentation in the link you provided. At least, I cannot locate them in our version.



I will need to look into what you say about the popups but in the meantime can you explain where in our version we can check those settings for the correct functioning of the 404 error page?

We are talking about articles and category, so you just use the Joomla article manager and the Joomla category manager

AS a side note, please upgrade to current version. Though we do reply, we can only officially support current version, should it be only to know which code is running on your site.

Rgds

Hi

Yes, you can certainly upgrade to the current version. You should actually get a "New version" update notification on your control panel. When you won't be able to update, the new versions won't show there.

Missing __404__ article or sh404SEF custom content category were only the most common errors preventing the use of sh404SEF error page.

In your case, your 404 errors generate a 200, and no redirect is even happening. There are many ways this can happen, it can be done either in your .htaccess file, through another plugin, ...

You really need to talk to the folks who developed the site.

Rgds

Hi

Just to confirm, we can update at any time to the latest version of sh404sef even though we are running Joomla 2.5 -is that correct?

That's correct. You will not benefit from all the latest features, as some are J3-only but the general code and URL generation engine, at least now, is designed for both.
Short-term, most likely on december 31st, we will stop supporting J2.x (which has been end-of-lifed at the end of last year). This means we will have a separate version for J2.5, and this J2.5 version will only get security patches if there was a security issue coming up (we didn't have any in the last 2.5 years).
Of course, sh404SEF will continue working as usual but no changes or even bug fixes will be made to the J2.5 version.

At first, I'll try look at the .htaccess and see if anything related to "404" shows up.

Rgds

Hi

1 - This URL still have ^ in them. As far as I know, this is an invalid character in a URL and it needs to be URL encoded. Any reason to use them?

2 - There is no recording because you don't have any 404 happening. If you visit this page for instance: http://xxxx.ie/Explore-the-Showroom/non-existing, instead of having a 404 you get a 200, because you have setup somehow a redirect to this page: http://xxxx.ie/page-not-found/404.html

This is very bad for SEO, and I warned you about that in my first message:

- more likely: because you don't use the sh404SEF error page. If I go to http://xxxx.ie/tiles-219/tilesxxxxxxxxxxx.html, I see regular page, with a 200 http status code.



That's very, very bad from an SEO standpoint and wonder how you've achieved that!

You should double and triple check your htaccess in case some redirect for 404 errors has been put there, or maybe you have one of those plugins that redirect 404s.
If one tries to load http://xxxx.ie/some-missing-page.html, they should stay on that page and not be redirected. A redirect always generate a 200 status code, and if the status is 200, of course sh404SEF doesn't record a 404 as none happen.

Rgds

Hi

So I think now we can safely say that there is no redirect taking place for 404 errors and that 404 errors are indeed taking place.

Not at all. I still get a code 200 when I visit http://xxxx.ie/tiles-219/tilesxxxxxxxxxxx.html, or any other page when altering it's URL.

Rgds

Hi

Can I know what the problem was? .htaccess related?

As I can see the joomla error page each time, even when the URL is totally non-existing (/sdklfjhsdkjfsd), I suspect you have at least one component set to "Use Joomla router" under the "By component" tab of sh404SEF configuration?

If so, and depending on how your template (overrides) are done, sh404SEF may not always be able to catch Joomla errors (because the Jooma router don't give back control when an error happens).

This should be solved in the upcoming release (4.7) that we have postponed until tomorrow Joomla security release. It has many changes, including visually, but it should solve the problem. If not, I will have to make a backup of the site, to be able to debug locally.
You can download this new version from here. Once installed, please note that the __404__ article and the associated category are not used any longer (they are unpublished, you can delete them after checking your error page works).
All error page configuration is now done in sh404SEF configuration, on the Error page tab.

Let me know.

Rgds