Bug Issue with vbDownloads rewrites...

[bzcomputers]

The following is in reference to vBDownloads rewrites:

1) I've noticed that some download page url rewrites contain a "-a" while others don't. Why do half of my rewrites contain it and half don't? (I see this by looking at the .xml produced for the downloads)

2) Rewrites are currently not being routed to the specific rewrite url. Both the following urls will take you to the same page.

Option 1:

www.mysitename.com/forum/downloads/download-category/download-filename-234.html

Option2:

www.mysitename.com/forum/downloads/download-category/i-can-put-anything-here-and-the-link-will-still-work-as-long-as-this-part-is-at-least-one-letter-or-number-long-followed-by-the-download-id-234.html

I see this happening elsewhere in DBSEO rewrites but everywhere else it appears Option2 is automatically forwarded to the correct rewrite url of Option 1, but this is not occurring within downloads rewrites.

This lack of a 301 redirect is causing some issues, including duplicate content pages in Google. At appears at some point some urls had the "-a" in them and now don't don't and vice versa. Now both versions are indexed.

 

[Fillip H.]

Can you give me a few examples of a download title that has the -a added?

I've fixed the lack of canonical URL, thanks

 

[bzcomputers]

Can you give me a few examples of a download title that has the -a added?

I've fixed the lack of canonical URL, thanks

As long as the canonical is fixed I think everything else for this is good.

I went back and checked all the "-a" urls and it appears all the current ones have dates (numbers) on the end. It may have been back in the beta testing when this may not have always been the case and the site was spidered and picked up a different url. I think with canonical fixed the duplicates will fix themselves in short time.

I guess I wasn't fully understanding the "-a" feature until now. Basically you're just placing a separator between the url id and any other number that may be at the start or end of the title so the id can still be distinguished even if a separator isn't used in the options, correct?

 

[Fillip H.]

A separator is always used, there's no way to not have a separator. Other than that, you're correct; it's used to make sure the regular expressions don't confuse the number(s) in the download title with the actual download ID.