Site Problems Caused By 301 Redirects?

[mdowling]

My web site is really in two halves, the original site and a shop using Actinic. It's confusing for customers and difficult to maintain so I have decided to move everything to the Actinic system.

At the moment I have content about the same subject on both. For instance on the old site
https://www.spectrumwellbeing.co.uk/...worrydolls.htm
and the equivalent on Actinic
https://www.spectrumwellbeing.co.uk/...orrydolls.html

To achieve this I am augmenting the text on the Actinic side and then using 301 redirects in .htaccess such as this
Redirect 301 /angelconfetti.htm /acatalog/angelconfetti.html

All was well until I tried to redirect index.htm to the actinic index.html
Redirect 301 /index.htm /acatalog/index.html

It didn't work because if you look for
https://www.spectrumwellbeing.co.uk/index.htm
it doesn't redirect and is still is the home page of the old site.

But it seems to have done something as if you try
https://www.spectrumwellbeing.co.uk/
you get a corrupted page

Ther Actinic home page it was intended to redirect to is this
https://www.spectrumwellbeing.co.uk/acatalog/index.html

I've removed the redirect from .htaccess but it's too late as it remains and I understand it is now permanent.

Can anyone help me sort out the mess I've created? I'm assuming it is the redirect making this problem or could that be a red herring? It occurred to me that I could rename the original homepage index.html (not htm as it is now) - would that cause the redirect that seems to be causing the problem to have no effect?

[Goz]

You do know that this is the Sellerdeck community not the Actinic community......

[Mantra]

I used to have a legacy website (www. not SSL) that linked to an SSL sub-domain set up specifically for Actinic catalog before setting up our complete shop site on Actinic / Sellerdeck.

When the Actinic / Sellerdeck site was properly established, I used 301 redirects for the legacy site in the .htaccess file in the root directory of the legacy site for the home page index and section pages generally as set out below:

Redirect 301 /index.html https://shop.mantra-audio.co.uk/index.html
Redirect 301 /grado_headphones.html https://shop.mantra-audio.co.uk/acat...eadphones.html
Redirect 301 /Audio_Technica_Stylus.html https://shop.mantra-audio.co.uk/acat...ca_stylus.html

This seemed to work just fine for the time it lasted so you could try changing the site you are transferring from .htaccess code lines in a similar format to see if that makes any difference.

For example
Redirect 301 /index.htm https://www.spectrumwellbeing.co.uk/acatalog/index.html

I would also save a copy of the .htaccess file before making changes, however, if you did not do this and have made changes to an existing .htaccess file you should still be able to remove or change the added 301 redirect code lines on the existing .htaccess file as you wish.

I have since removed all content from the legacy site with the exception of the home page and this is now set up with a redirect to the ...//acatalog/index.html on the site host server.

[mdowling]

Thanks Goz and Mantra. Yes indeed Sellerdeck - I should have forgotten Actinic by now! I'll try your redirect Mantra later on when I'm in the office.

[graphicz]

The OP emailed me separately about this although the site and hosting is not mine.

Here is my reply

If you look at: https://www.whynopadlock.com/results...4-8acded4dd39f you do not have a Force HTTPS expression in your htaccess. I do not have your ftp details so cannot do it for you.

That is why your page is displaying wihout the style sheets referenced.

If you view source on spectrumwellbeing.co.uk you will see that the BASEHREF is to the non secure http and this will be causing this. This means that in Settings, Business Settings, Payment and security you do not have Use SSL on Whole site ticked and the relevant urls entered in network settings.

As regards redirects there are a great many tricks you can do with htaccess.

Sellerdeck's habit of having two index.htmls is an old chestnut.

In the content tree go to Onlne Catalog or whatever you call it and look at Page Settings.

Change index.html to shop.html (or whatever).

In htaccess put

Redirect 301 /acatalog/index.html /acatalog/shop.html

Put a blank index page in the acatalog folder so people cannot see the directory of files.

[zgap111]

Seeing links with "http://" in the source...

I remember Sellerdeck has a setting that you tick to say the whole site is SSL
Maybe ticking that might update those links

Also, I seem to have this in my htaccess to redirect http to https

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
# Redirect HTTP to HTTPS
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.###your_domain_name_here###/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>]

Also on the hosting, if you have access to the settings, I see this for ours:



The page with the broken images... I see this, its like the files don't exist