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#4303 – Main URL is reverting after being explicitly selected

Posted in ‘sh404SEF’

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Friday, 10 November 2017 20:52 UTC

webmasterhlc

Greetings:

We have an issue that might actually be two issues. We've been using sh404SEF since 2010 and have not seen this problem before. Specifically, just recently we discovered that many of our URL's have extremely large numbers of duplicates - whereas the most we would see was 8 or 9, we now see sometimes as many as 250 or more. But some of our URL's still only have one (or none). This may or may not be a problem, but it is surprising - and it makes hunting for the correct Main URL a challenge.

We recently launched this page:

https://www.xxxx.org/Programs-Events/conference.html

It has 169 duplicates (see screen capture). The default Main URL was incorrect - it didn't have the breadcrumbs - so we located and selected the correct URL. After a few days, without intervention from us, the URL has switched back.

This switching back of the Main URL has happened many times in the past few weeks. We have looked through the forums here without finding an answer, and we tried purging the URLs but the problem returns.

These issues didn't manifest until recently - but we're not quite sure when. It may have been after a recent Joomla or sh404SEF update. However, we are not seeing this behavior on our development site (which is located on the same physical server but running out of a different directory and domain, behind a password wall), which makes it even more confusing.

Please let me know what other information I can provide to get to the bottom of this, and thank you for help!

Regards,

Jon

Monday, 13 November 2017 10:04 UTC

wb_weeblr

Specifically, just recently we discovered that many of our URL's have extremely large numbers of duplicates - whereas the most we would see was 8 or 9, we now see sometimes as many as 250 or more.

There is a 99.9999999% chance that this is caused by a series of bugs in the Joomla router that appeared in Joomla 3.7.x and where initially fixed in 3.8.0, and (hopefully) fully fixed in Joomla 3.8.1+. The router was trying to be smart and replaced the Itemid in the source non-sef URL by another one it thought was better.
That normally does not cause any real issue with sh404SEF, as those URLs are noted as duplciates only, but as URLs are recorded in the database, this can add up a lot of duplicates.
This would not apply if differences between duplicates are not just Itemid though.

However, we are not seeing this behavior on our development site (which is located on the same physical server but running out of a different directory and domain, behind a password wall), which makes it even more confusing.

Your staging site does not get traffic, so conditions to display links in modules or specific pages do not happen, which will certainly affect the diversity of URLs created on the site by Joomla/extensions/your template.

As for the actual problem, it's not something I have seen that much before, though I do remember at least one instance (and we never really got to the end of it).
Things to consider:

- is the URL that gets back to #1 spot always the same?
- if so, how does it differs from the other, especially the "right" one? just a difference in Itemid?
- what are the actual and full non-sef for the "good" main URL, and the wrong one?

Assuming you are fully up to date with Joomla and sh404SEF, I would suggest:

- make sure all Itemid-related settings under the "Itemid management" section on the "Advanced" tab are set to No (take note of any setting that was not, before resetting to No)
- make sure all com_content settings under the "By component" settings are set to their default value.
- Delete with duplicates the URL "Programs-Events/conference.html". Then reload the front page, or a page where that link happen. Set the main URL if needed, and see if the problem comes back.

Rgds

Tuesday, 28 November 2017 05:34 UTC

system

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