#5710 – Finding broken url in sh404sef

Hi

Thanks for your continued support. In all support case, please be sure to include specifics about your issue, ie real and full link to the site, real and full URL that's causing the issue are the 1st things needed.

In that case and in addition:

- do you really mean "redirected"? ie the address in the browser bar changes from say, "example.com/my-article-title" to "example.com/blog"?
- or instead does the URL stays the same, "example.com/my-article-title" but what you see on the screen looks like your blog page?

Lastly, the other important things about that URL:

- what is the non-sef URL associated with it in the SEF URL Manager?
- are there any duplicates listed for it in the "Duplicates" column?

Best regards

Hi

a blog page loads -the url stays the same but the wrong content / page type is loaded

As you provided the URL I can see indeed that the URL does not change and so there's no redirect happening.

So I suspect this is simply a matter of Joomla creating duplicate URLs here and I would suggest you provide replies to my questions:

- what is the non-sef URL associated with it in the SEF URL Manager?

- are there any duplicates listed for it in the "Duplicates" column?

Best regards

Hi

I'm not entirely sure where to look for above

1 - Go to the SEF URL manager
2 - In the search box, enter : Bulk-Solids-Handling-Products/bulk-solids-handling-products.html
(no leading slash)

This will show the SEF URL as generated by sh404SEF. You can then see:

- what's the non-sef URL (the internal Joomla address for that page, something like index.php?option=com_content&......)
- whether some duplicates are listed in the "Duplicates" column

I can't see any reference to the single article just the blog layout pages

That would indicate that sh404SEF did not create that URL which would be very odd, especially if it created all the others.
If that URL does not exist in the SEF URL manager, then where did you obtain it? on which page can this link be found?

Best regards

Hi

There is a blog link in one menu but the parameters are different than display - if I unpublish this link it doesn't make any difference

I notice if I click the navigation in the blog layout it re-directs to the home page - no idea if this is relevant

Again, please specific: which menu item and which link.

I cannot see any link to /Bulk-Solids-Handling-Products/bulk-solids-handling-products.html in your menus. Where is it? This matters, it's actually the only important thing: where is that link supposed to be found?

Best regards

Hi

I could not find that link in the bottom navigation but by searching the page source code I finally found that this is the link for the "Products" menu item

[xxxx]

This link exists in the menu but is not published in a menu on the front end of the site.

If so, then this link does not exist for sh404SEF. This is why you do not find it in the URL manager and it will always trigger a 404 until its actually created and stored in the database.

"I notice if I click the navigation in the blog layout it re-directs to the home page - no idea if this is relevant "

It does not redirect to the home page. The URL is the same, still
/Bulk-Solids-Handling-Products/bulk-solids-handling-products.html so this is NOT a redirect to the home page. It only displays as the home page.

Currently trying to visit that page does NOT trigger a 404. The most likely reason is that you have changed some of the defaults settings:

- under the Advanced tab of sh404SEF configuration, you have enabled "301 redirect from Joomla SEF to sh404SEF". If so, please set that back to No
- under the "By component" tab of sh404SEF configuration, you have set ANY compnent to "Use Joomla router". If so, please set ALL components back to "Use Default handler"

The above settings should make it back to the normal setup where you should have a 404 when that URL is called. Once we do get a 404, we can then address this.

Best regards

Hi

I decided to purge the urls and this does seem to have resolved the problem

I was told by the SEO company not to do this but I felt I had no option

I would have advised the exact same, to NOT purge URLs. I hope the fix is permanent but as we do not know yet what the problem was, we'll have to see how it goes.

The next step was simply for me to login to the backend and check things out. If that does not work, we usually take an akeeba backup of the site and install a local copy of the site to debug it step by step. Nothing can stay unexplained really.

I will leave this ticket open in case you need to add something. It will automatically close in 2 weeks if no further comment is made.

Best regards