Redirects not working

This is really wierd.

Here’s an example of what I’m seeing. A URL appears in the 404 log: ?
/products??/bunded-tanks??/bunded-oil-tanks??/

I click on it and it givies me a 404.

The redirect exists and should redirect to: /products/bunded-tanks/oil/
When I click on the above redirect in the redirect list it works!!

However, if you try and go to that URL manually it gives a 404??

I previously had another redirect plugin installed before yours and I manually setup all the redirects through your interface (not imported) one by one as I removed them from Simple 301 redirects.

We have adwords running against these so its causing issues with paid traffic.

Any ideas whats causing this? Thanks

This is becoming a complete mess.

I get a 404 showing in the log for /products/bunded-tanks/oil/ yet when I go to the page from the menu, URL exactly the same, the page is there?

I know this is a free plugin, however I’m beginning to wish I never installed it.

Probably a browser caching issue… Browsers like Chrome will cache page status, redirects, etc. Try checking from a mobile device, icognito browser, or another browser all together.

Hi jblifestyles, thanks for your comment.

The URL appears in the 404 log though. When i click on the link in the log it is a 404 and then when I type the actual URL into a browser it redirects as normal.

Say the URL is : /interceptor-cleaning/ in the log this 404’s when i click on it. When i got to a browser and enter that URL, it redirects as it should.

I’m going to uninstall it I think and just either add them all manually in htaccess or look for another plugin.

Its been a massive headache switching to this from simple 301 redirects. Never again.

There’s something weird going on when i copy and paste URLs that might be having an impact on this.

I’m trying to sort this mess out and the more i look into it the more weirder it gets.

Take this URL from the redirection list for example:

/products??/bunded-tanks??/bunded-oil-tanks?/
it should redirect to:
/products/bunded-tanks/oil/
But it doesn’t work

When i copy the URL from the Redirects tab and paste it in a text file it looks like this:

/products??/bunded-tanks??/bunded-oil-tanks?/

Where are these ?? coming from?

Could this be why some are not working?

So confused :/

Ok i’m think i’m getting somewhere.

If you add a redirect from the 404 list with the add redirect button, it puts ??’s in the URL, so don’t add them from there.

Copy and psting URLs from within the plugin adds spurious characters into the address therefore the 301 doesn’t work.

I’ve been through and checked the list by editing the 301 and copy and pasting it into a plain text file.

The ones that were not working had ??’s or % signs in. Even though they looked fine in the plugin.

Watch out for this, it’s caused me a massive headache!

Just when i thought I’d sorted everything….I managed to solve a lot of the issues because of the post above.

However, URLs coming from some adwords get 404’s. It seems to be an issue with the parameter they add to the end like this:

?gclid=CIHd-rT5g8sCFSIIwwod-MUMRQ

The normal URL is fine, however I’ve just watched traffic from adwords it the guy got a 404!!!!

Can anyone help with this?

Does this plugin actually get supported?

If it doesn’t I’m just going to uninstall it and put it down to a bad decision

Ended up uninstalling this and installing Simple 301 redircts which worked a treat.

One other thing to watch out for with this plugin is it treats non trailing and trailing slashes separetly.

Beware!

Hi @ianharmon,

I had exactly the same issue and found a fix. What worked for me was “run PHP as” setting in “PHP Settings” on plesk server. Its value was “FPM application served by Apache“. I changed it to “CGI/FastCGI application served by Apache” and the plugin started working very well.

Hope it helps.

Thanks!