no page names and 301 redirect problems

[GeordieSEO]

One of our customers has a problem with their catalogue.

Firstly, for some reason a lot of the sections have no name set in the URL section. This means that when the client changes the section title it changes the URL's.

The catalog version is 5.16 but at some point it was upgraded from 4.xx to 5.xx - I don't know if this is significant.

In order to solve the 404 errors I want to setup 301 redirects for the old URL's to the new ones. (I also intend to put names in all the sections to hopefully fix the errors).

I have written the .htaccess file and it is in the correct format

e.g.
redirect 301 /acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Canvas_Ballet_Shoes____Split_Sole__31.html http://www.stagestruck.co.uk/acatalo..._Sole__92.html

However, when I upload the .htaccess file I cannot view the catalog - I just get 500 server errors.

Any ideas on the problems

[cdicken]

Hi there

Sorry it has taken so long to get around to your question.

So is it definitely cauded by the htaccess file? In other words, when you remove the file does it solve the problem.

Long term you are going to have to enter page filenames in the 'Page Name' field in the 'Layout' tab of a section as this will fix the page names.

With regards to the immediate problem, I have no idea. The perl is not called when you just click on a link so I don't know what is causing the script error. I have just tried the old address in my browser and I was able to add to cart with no problems.

[GeordieSEO]

There was an character which appeared to be a space that wasn't in the last redirect and it fixed it (although it took a while).

The catalog is now working fine. I have put the current page names from the live site into the blank page names.

Do you have any idea why page names weren't set up automatically by Actinic when a section was created.

[cdicken]

In v4, there was not a 'Page Name' field so you just got auto-generated ones.

When you upgrade to v5, you will still get auto-generated ones until you manually enter a value in the 'Page Name' field.

[GeordieSEO]

Thanks for the info