A Joomla system plugin against duplicate pages: it sends every variant of a page URL to the correct one with a 301 redirect, or returns a 404. Also useful when the site structure changes.
In Joomla the same page is often reachable at several addresses. An article, for example, may open at index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=498&catid=37&Itemid=199, index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=498, /news/498-title.html, /news/498-title and /news/498. All of these can end up in search engine indexes, so a site with a hundred pages shows a thousand in webmaster tools. Such duplicates hurt the site's ranking.
JL No Doubles merges the duplicates: when a visitor or crawler requests an incorrect address, the plugin redirects to the correct page. It is also used to tidy up URLs after the site structure changes.
Features
- 301 redirect to the correct page address.
- A 404 response for incorrect addresses.
- Works with articles (com_content), tags (com_tags) and Joomla menus.
- Handles Joomla categories, including pagination and various category duplicates.
- Support for K2, VirtueMart, ZOO, JoomShopping, HikaShop and Phoca Cart; for JoomShopping: product pages, categories and manufacturers.
- Exclusions for any component installed on the site.
- Regular expression exclusions, for analytics systems and extensions that do not follow the Joomla router rules.
- Multilingual sites and Cyrillic URLs.
- Russian and English language files.
FAQ
Does it work with a modified router or non-standard components?
The plugin is designed for the standard Joomla router. If the router has been modified, or a component builds URLs outside the Joomla rules, correct behaviour is not guaranteed. Components of this kind, such as sitemap components, are easiest to add to the exclusions.
A product is available in two categories. Will the plugin remove the duplicate?
If these are two different products in different categories, the plugin will not merge them: that is a matter of site structure, not of the router.
Links in the article archive cause a redirect loop
The Joomla article archive has not been tested with the plugin. Such URLs can be excluded in the plugin settings: set variable values for the component at which no redirect happens, or add a stop word from the URL.
A caching plugin also caches the duplicate URL
The plugin and caching extensions run on the same event, so a cache entry may be created for the duplicate address as well. Duplicates drop out of search indexes over time, and such requests become rare.
Compatibility and requirements
- Joomla 3.
- Extension type: system plugin.
