#937 – 404 Manager - Import?

Hi

It's not 404s that you want to import, it's aliases. 404 are never imported, they are a log of 404 requests made to your site.

I'd suggest you export URLS (from the URL manager), and Aliases from the Aliases manager. Then look at the resulting files to see what the fields are.
Then you can build up an Aliases file that you can later on import.

One word of warning: I've never been able to create a suitable CSV file in Excel. It simply doesn't create valid CSV files (ie with commas as separator and quotes around text strings). OpenOffice/Libre office can do that, as maybe can other Spreadsheet software.

Rgds

Hi

Yes, I know what you want to do. And I explained above the process to do it.

1 - You never import into the 404 manager. Precisely because it manages 404s, not valid URL. And this is why the 404 manager only has an export button.
2 - Redirect (as per the documentation) are called aliases and are added into the Aliases manager or the URL manager

That's where you want to import any data
So to summarize:
- the 404 export will give you a list of redirects sources
- the URL manager export will give a list of redirects targets
- in Excel, you can massage both and produce an Aliases csv file, which you can then import into the Aliases manager.

May I ask which excel version you use and on which platform? Also what's your machine language?

Rgds

Hi

A matter of opinion I guess. "Enter a redirect" is the language used universally to handle 404 - and redirect them to another, similar URL. Create an alias would be consistent with other areas of sh404SEF, but less clear for casual users.
Aliases are basically hidden most of the times, as their main purpose is to redirect when one manually customize an URL. In that case, the alias is created automatically, so regular users don't even think about it.

Rgds

I tried again with all csv and txt options (Microsoft Office 365) and no luck.

I usually get ; instead of , to separate fields, and text is never surrounded by "

I asked because I had another user (in the US) unable to produce these CSV with Excel (2013 too I think)

Rgds

Hi

Are you saying that exporting an alias file (from the Aliases manager) and then importing it back fails?

Or are you trying to import into the Alias manager a file exported from the URL manager? (which is not supposed to work).

Can you email the file you exported from sh404SEF then tried to import to [email protected], mentioning this ticket #937 in the subject?

Rgds


Thanks

Hi

That's not what I explained above. Aliases and 404 are not the same thing, you can't import one into the other because for 404, we don't know what the correct non-sef URL is (by definition, a 404 being a missing URL).

So to summarize:

- the 404 export will give you a list of redirects sources

- the URL manager export will give a list of redirects targets

- in Excel, you can massage both and produce an Aliases csv file, which you can then import into the Aliases manager.

You must import into the Alias manager a file that follows the Alias format. You can get the required fields by exporting a file from the Alias manager for instance.

Rgds

Hi

1 - The process is explained above: whether you have 3 or 3000 is the same, as it's only a matter of moving around some columns in Excel.
Here's a sample Aliases import file:

"Nbr","Alias","Sef url","Non sef url","Type","Hits"
"1","frequent-questions/general","frequent-questions","index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=429&id=30&lang=en&view=article","0","0"
"2","general/about-weeblr","about-weeblr","index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=329&id=28&lang=en&view=article","0","0"
"3","josetta","fast-effective-translations-for-joomla/josetta","index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=194&id=4&lang=en&view=article","0","0"
"4","plan/subscribe/bundle-sh404sef-nbspjosettanbsp-nbsponenbspyear","plan/subscribe/bundle-sh404sef-josetta-one-year","index.php?option=com_payplans&Itemid=305&lang=en&plan_id=3&task=subscribe&view=plan","0","0"
"5","sh404sef","joomla-seo-analytics-security/sh404sef","index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=195&id=5&lang=en&view=article","0","0"

This is what you have to produce in excel to import as aliases.

3 - I'm confused now: why do you want to redirect ALL 3000 urls to a single article page? from an SEO standpoint, that's totally useless: no ranking or backlinks will be passed is the source page and the target are not similar.
I thought you had a new page for each old page and wanted to match one on one.
Any other reason to do those redirects?

Anyway, if you only have one single non-sef redirect target, producing the excel file should be much easier.

Rgds

Hi

Type is the type of alias, it should be 0 in most cases and doesn't exist in URL table.

Understand about why you want to redirect to one single URL. Must be a big PDF...

Rgds

Hi

Euh yes, this file format is totally wrong, just as I warned you at the beginning. It's the wrongly formatted files produced by Excel:

Nbr;Alias;Sef url;Non sef url;Type;Hits
1;01-12-2014-sport-abend/;01-12-2014-sport-abend/;index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148&catid=90&Itemid=783;0;1
2;03-11-2014-nachrichten-abend/;03-11-2014-nachrichten-abend/;index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148&catid=90&Itemid=783;0;2

A correct format is for instance:

"Nbr","Alias","Sef url","Non sef url","Type","Hits"
"1","01-12-2014-sport-abend/","01-12-2014-sport-abend/","index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148&catid=90&Itemid=783","0","1"
"2","03-11-2014-nachrichten-abend/","03-11-2014-nachrichten-abend/","index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=148&catid=90&Itemid=783","0","2"

; is not valid, it should be a comma (hence the name: Comma Separated Values) and text surrounded by quotes "

Rgds