Move 301 redirects from .htaccess to URI Management?

[Kent Multer]

Hi folks,

One of my clients has an .htaccess file that contains hundreds of 301 redirects for old categories or products. Now that they are on version 9, would it be better to delete these from .htaccess and handle them with URI Management?

Thanks --

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Yes, better to have them in the store, because in htaccess, the server has to parse that file and analyze each one to see if it's applicable with every single request, even for static content.

[lesliekirk]

Question - can the URI Management handle adding the redirect needed for all the old style links out in the wild to come to the new URI Management links? Or is that going to be a snippet of code that needs to be added?

[ILoveHostasaurus]

If you have old "long format" links to a given site and there is still some component of that link that matches the new style, then that should be handled via rewrite in the htaccess.

So, if the site was /mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=blah and now it's /widgets/blah.html you can just rewrite those:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} Screen=PROD&Product_Code=(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/widgets/%1.html [R=301,L]

# same thing to catch prod code in middle of query string
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} Screen=PROD&Product_Code=(.*)& [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/widgets/%1.html [R=301,L]

[lesliekirk]

Okay good. What if the store is not using a product or category "identifier" as soon in your /widgets/ (I think?)

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Doesn't matter as long as there is something in the old URL that always maps to the new URL, so if all traditional prod and cat codes have been retained in the new structure, you can catch them all with the two rewrites. If product codes also changed, then the only option is uri management or rewrites for every single changed code since there's nothing to tie them together.

[Kent Multer]

Is there an easy way to import a large number of URLs into URI Management settings? Or will we have to manually enter each one?

Thanks again --

[PCINET - Andreas]

You can create a CSV file and import it under data management.

[Kent Multer]

Ah, that's a relief :) . Thanks!

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody! I am thankful for this community, and all the help it gives to my clients and me.

[Kent Multer]

Hi David, I'm just revisiting this issue today. I was looking at your post above where you gave two examples of ..htaccess commands. It looks to me like they are both identical, and I don't understand what the difference is supposed to be. Am I missing something, or was there a typo?

Thanks --

[alphabet]

Yea, you're missing something... the $ and ?

The first rewrite condition has a $ symbol which means in Pearl string 'ends with' product code.

For urls with a product code within the path, the second condition says that it has a wildcard product code followed with an ampersand.

[Kent Multer]

Sheesh, I must have read those commands three times, and didn't notice the ampersand versus the dollar sign. Thanks for the clarification!

[Kent Multer]

Hi David, I just ran into a possible snag on this project. The client's store has been around for a while, and it's using MMUI. The docs say that you can't use URI Management on an MMUI store ... but is that true in all cases? We only need partial functionality here.

The store is currently running Legacy SEO, and we don't want to change the URL format. We just need URI Management for the 301's. It seems like this might work, if we set up URI Mgmt. for the legacy-style URIs, and switch it on, and don't change anything else. The store could then recognize the incoming links, and the page templates will still be rendering links in that format. Will that work, or are there some pieces of the puzzle that would still be missing?

Thanks --

[Kent Multer]

Hi, I hope I can get an answer on that last question. I have a client who has an actual need for that type of setup. Otherwise he's faced with the choice of either converting his whole store to CSSUI, or putting hundreds of 301's into his .htaccess file. Hope we can find a better way? Thanks --

[Rick Wilson]

I've confirmed with Dev, there is none of the URI functionality in MMUI.

Also for what it's worth you really should get off MMUI sooner rather than later. It's in my perspective the new "Version 4".