The case of the unwanted redirects

[qmeister]

Hi,

I have a very intriguing case of redirects which I can't seem to resolve. To explain: a previous developer had set up a custom component to manage redirects from a previous shop to the new URLs which resulted after changing to the new shop component. All of that happened some time ago and we no longer need those redirects in place. Furthermore we've discovered that it is preventing genuine 404 error logging to occur. So I've located and uninstalled that component however we are still getting redirects for incorrect URLs instead of a 404 error but only when the URL is shop-related.

To explain with some examples:

domain.com/some-Joomla-category/article-name.html is a genuine correct URL. If we try domain.com/some-Joomla-category/article-namexxxxx.html then we get the default Joomla 404 error page.

domain.com/shop-category-215/category-name.html is a genuine correct URL. If we try domain.com/shop-category-215/category-namexxxxx.html we don't get the default Joomla 404 error page but rather we are redirected to the Mijoshop homepage which we don't have published on the site.

We have disabled the Mijoshop Redirect plugin, the Joomla System Redirect plugin and have checked in sh404sef that we have no such redirects in place. Furthermore we have removed all redirects from htaccess and still this is occurring.

I can't think how else this might be happening.

Would anyone have any ideas? I'd be ever so grateful for any help anyone might be able to offer.

Many thanks in advance.

[itoctopus]

Firefox caches redirects - have you tried using another browser to see if the redirects are still occurring? If they are, then it must be something that you have missed (maybe at the server level).

[qmeister]

Thanks for your reply. I've checked across a host of browsers and it happens in all of them so I'm reasonable sure it's not an issue with the browser cache.

When you say that it might be something at the server level - can you give me an example of what I might be looking for? I have access to the plesk control panel so could investigate there is necessary.

Many thanks again.

[Per Yngve Berg]

Have you checked the Redirect Component?

[qmeister]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. As mentioned before Joomla System Redirect plugin has already been disabled. I imagine that is sufficient or do we also need to trash items?

[Per Yngve Berg]

And there is nothing in the .htaccess file?

[qmeister]

There are a handful of redirects in the htaccess file but they are not related to the destination URL redirect which we are experiencing. In any case I have tested by removing those from htaccess and we still experience that redirect. Could this have been hard-coded somewhere? Or would it have to reside in a redirect plugin/htaccess?

[Per Yngve Berg]

It's not a redirect. Even if you unpublish the menu item, the Component is still active.

[qmeister]

So if it's not a redirect, what is it? And more importantly, how do stop it occurring?

[Per Yngve Berg]

Turn off SEF in Global Configuration so you can see the real urls.