Hi, oftentimes because of a supplier issue, a product will change so significantly that it needs a new name, and a new product created in the Cart.

In the past, after creating the new product in the Cart, on the expired product's Admin page we clear the Sell Button checkbox, then add text and a link in the Long Description field to direct visitors to the new product URL.

Unfortunately Google continues to show high ranking results for those expired products - often for years. This brings a lot of new visitors to product pages with no Sell Button, and creates a lot of confusion.

1. Can anyone recommend the best .htaccess lines to redirect those visitors to the newer product URL?

From:

https://www.example.com/proddetail.php?prod=Expired-Red-Product

to:

https://www.example.com/proddetail.php?prod=New-Green-Product

Note: these URLs generally have long strings appended by the referring sites, so the redirects would need to keep those intact.

2. If there's a better way to accomplish this, or if there are any potential pitfalls, best practices, etc., for this type of change we'd be grateful to hear.

Thank in advance.

- Paul D.

I think a 301 permanent redirect for the no longer available product to the new product in the .htaccess file is the solution

Steve
Manchester, UK

Using ECT since 2004

The proddetail page .htaccess URL redirect trick is here >>
Note that all your URL Redirects should be grouped together and appear near bottom of the .htaccess file, before Custom HTML Error Pages (if you have those).

The old product page should be hidden by removing the tick from the "Display Product" box.
Regenerate a new sitemap.xml file and submit to Google and Bing.

Gary

Perfect... thanks so much. Sorry I missed that 01/17/2017 post of yours. This definitely seems to work as desired.

Quote:

How to redirect
www. example .com/proddetail.php?prod=SH-CRANK-KIT
to
www. example .com/proddetail.php?prod=SH-CRANK-NEW-KIT

Here are the ".htaccess" file entries that achieve the proddetail.php page redirect, as described in that example.
# ======================================================
# URL Redirects for proddetail.php pages
# ======================================================
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^prod=SH-CRANK-KIT
RewriteRule ^proddetail\.php$ http:// www. example .com/proddetail.php?prod=SH-CRANK-NEW-KIT [R=301,L]

Just delete the spaces I put in the www. example .com URL above.

As suggested, you should then clear the Display Product checkbox on the old product's Admin page, update your sitemaps, etc.