#7676 – Duplicate URL Issue

Hi

I can fix this by taking the URL, going to SH404SEF, searching, clicking "Duplicates" and clicking that grayed out star, then clearing the cache. 

Which cache are you talking about? the Joomla cache? your browser cache? or do you mean that you Purge sh404SEF URLs, using the Purge button in the SEF URL manager?

If the latter, you must not do that. What's happening is that:

- your site menu and content setup creates duplicate URLs for the same content

- sh404SEF groups all those duplicates under one single URL, so that search engines only see one single URL for each content.

- the default URL selected is the one from your home page, that's why you see modules that are likely meant for the home page.

- if you cannot prevent links being created without the proper menu item in them, you need to change the "main" URL under "Duplicates" as you currently do. This change should be permanent.

- but then don't purge sh404SEF URLs, as this will in essence delete the manual selection yo ujust made.

Of course, all this assumes you are using sh404SEF default configuration, especially under the "By component" tab.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

To answer your question, I was clicking "Clean Cache" at the very bottom of the page (screenshot attached below). 

"Clean cache" is not related to sh404SEF, it's coming from another extension on your site.

However, we DO in fact click "Purge" button in the SEF manager. So in essence, that is whats causing our issue? 

It's not causing the issue directly. However each time you fixed the issue on a URL (by going to "Duplicates" and selecting the proper "main" URL), if you later on "Purge" URLs, then you delete your fix, and you're back to step 1, with the issue re-appearing sooner or later.

In essence, once a site has been put in production, made public, you should never use the Purge button again. This is roughly equivalent to working on content and then deleting that content. It can be required during development but not afterwards.

We are using it in the "by component" tab. 

Not sure what you mean by that. What are you using under the "By component" tab of sh404SEF configuration?

So we currently have close to 200 articles that are displaying the home page content above the article. Is there a fast way to fix them? Or do we have to go one by one in the process I spelled out above to fix them?

Unless your dev team can find out why URLs to your articles are created without menu item in them, or with the menu item of your home page, I'm afraid you'll have to fix them up manually. Now, you won't have to do that again if you don't purge URLs later on.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr

Hi

we are wondering: what about articles without menu items eg blog category articles. How can we avoid duplicates with those?

Whether an article has a menu item or not does not matter. sh404SEF does not use menu items itself, in that the SEF URL will never depend on it.

The actual problem is when Joomla or an extension tries to create a link to an article. If the no menu item id is provided when building the non-sef URL (that's in turned passed to sh404SEF to be transformed into a SEF) and Joomla cannot find one, it will include the Itemid (menu item id) of the current page.

That's how you end up with multiple non-sef URLs for the same article usually. I can't say how it's caused on your site. Often, it's when you use a Preview extension for instance or a module on the home page, that sort of things.

Your blog menu item is a link to the category right? Not sure why Joomla does not pick it but again, it depends on how templates and extensions build the non-sef links.

One thing that can be done is often to add hidden menu items, if not to the articles themselves but at least to the categories. You create a menu and add menu items, but just do not add any menu module to actually display the "hidden" menu. That's often enough for Joomla to be able to pickup the links.

Best regards

Yannick Gaultier

weeblr.com / @weeblr