Solving the Joomla .htaccess & SH404sef puzzle

facing canonical issue

[kinley]

Hi,

I have installed Joomla CMS for my site hosted with Aplus.net shared hosting account.

To make my site SEO friendly, I installed SH404sef and modified the .htaccess file accordingly.

I have tried every trick (possibly) in the book to redirect mysite.com to www.mysite.com But it is not happening.

I tried using rewritecond %{http_host} ^mysite.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [r=301,L] BUT it only works when SH404sef is disabled.

I really love the functionality of SH404sef and would not like to skip it for my site.

FYI: I am using Joomla 1.5 and PHP5x

All suggestions/inputs are welcome

Thanks.

[travelin cat]

kinley,

We are running almost the identical configuration as you are on a site, here's what's in our .htaccess:

#
# mod_rewrite in use

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [R=301,L]

# Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL
# is not directly related to physical file paths.
# Update Your Joomla!/MamboDirectory (just / for root)

# RewriteBase /

Notice the backslash after mysite. Also, [NC] is in caps as are many other things. I think this will solve your problem.

[kinley]

Thanks travelin cat,

Thanks for your feedback.

I inserted the "corrected" RewriteEngine code before
########## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section BUT Still it is not working.

The Firefox footer status bar displays bouncing between mysite.com and www.mysite.com and in the end the error message displayed is: ""Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.""

I am posting the entire .htaccess code in the next post here.

[kinley]

##
# @version $Id: htaccess.txt 10492 2008-07-02 06:38:28Z ircmaxell $
# @package Joomla
# @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2008 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved.
# @license [gnu.org...] GNU/GPL
# Joomla! is Free Software
##

#####################################################
# READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE
#
# The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems
# with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already
# be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in
# your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to
# beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work,
# it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here.
#
#####################################################

## Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above.
Options +FollowSymLinks

#mod_rewrite in use

########## Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits
## If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below
## This attempts to block the most common type of exploit `attempts` to Joomla!
#
# Block out any script trying to set a mosConfig value through the URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=¦\%3D) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*\(.*\) [OR]
# Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<¦%3C).*script.*(\>¦%3E) [NC,OR]
# Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=¦\[¦\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR]
# Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=¦\[¦\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})
# Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error!
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L]
#
########## End - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits

# Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL
# is not directly related to physical file paths.
# Update Your Joomla! Directory (just / for root)

#RewriteBase /

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [mysite.com...] [R=301,L]

########## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section
#
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/¦\.php¦\.html¦\.htm¦\.feed¦\.pdf¦\.raw¦/[^.]*)$ [NC]
#RewriteRule (.*) index.php
#RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L]
#
########## End - Joomla! core SEF Section

########## Begin 3rd Party or Core SEF Section
#
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/folder/component/option,com) [NC,OR] ##optional - see notes##
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/¦\.htm¦\.php¦\.html¦/[^.]*)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) index.php
#
########## End 3rd Party or Core SEF Section

[g1smd]

Note that your non-www to www redirect code does not fix up any hostname with an appended port number or period.

Change the RewriteCond to this, to also fix those problems:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} [b]![/b]^[b]www\.[/b]mysite\.com[b]$[/b] [NC]

[kinley]

Thanks Buddy :)