Category changes

[djordje]

Hello everyone,

First of all - thanks for great job you're doing here at the forum!

I have a task to make some changes in current categories tree on an existing website, and I have concerns about SEO. Basically, I need to put all existing categories and corresponding subcategories in a number of newly created categories. This changes will affect URLs of all 4-5000 products in database, and I'm asking for advice how to do this as painlessly as possible.

Would I need to do some kind of 'folders' redirections via htaccess to 301 redirect old URLs to new URLs or is there any other way to do this?

Thanks in advance

[AH]

From the limited information you have provided.

You will need to do re-directs.


If you dont want to write the .htaccess stuff yourself

I have had a lot of success using this extension for Joomla that allows you to manage URL redirections

https://www.selfget.com/products/redj.html

Very easy to use and maintain any number of rules.

You can use wildcards to simplify your redirects and thus you may end up with only a few of them.

PS. I am not affiliated with this company in any way  -

I just like the extension and use it for Virtuemart especially when I remove a product/category from sale and don't want a 404, or change categories etc

[djordje]

Thanks for your reply.

I guess I should have told that I use VirtueMart 3.0.12 with Joomla 3.4.8.

Basically for existing product, lets call it ProductA, current URL is something like /oldCategory1/subCategory11/ProductA

When I merge some existing categories into newly created categories, URL of ProductA will be /newCategory/oldCategory1/subCategory11/ProductA

As I'm new to Joomla and Virtuemart, my first idea was to use htaccess, but I will try the extension you mentioned.

Thanks again.

[AH]

REDj will definitely work for your scenario.

You can use the community edition to do your tests

I used the community edition but  upgraded  to the Enterprise edition because the extension saved me so much time and effort

I did not use the enterprise edition features, but felt that the developer should at least get 9 euros for all the time and effort he saved me :-)

[djordje]

Thanks guys, I will definitely try this extension, and will let you know if worked for me.