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    4. Removing URL Parentheses in HTACCESS

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    Removing URL Parentheses in HTACCESS

    Technical SEO
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    • JaredMumford
      JaredMumford last edited by

      Im reworking a website for a client, and their current URLs have parentheses. I'd like to get rid of these, but individual 301 redirects in htaccess is not practical, since the parentheses are located in many URLs.

      Does anyone know an HTACCESS rule that will simply remove URL parantheses as a 301 redirect?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JaredMumford
        JaredMumford last edited by

        I thought I'd come back and re-post the solution in case this shows up in SERPs or anyone other Moz members are looking for this answer (courtesy Noah Wooden of Izoox). HTACCESS:

        <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On

        # Strip set of opening-closing parenthesis from URL and 301 redirect.
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [()]+
            RewriteRule ^(.)[(]+([^)])[)]+(.*)$ /$1$2$3 [R=301,L]</ifmodule>

        Remember to put this in the proper 'order' on your htaccess file if you are doing any other redirecting. The code above 301 redirects URLs with parentheses into the exact same URL minus the parentheses.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • JaredMumford
          JaredMumford @JaredMumford last edited by

          thanks Merlin - Ill have their programmer try this.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Amsplash
            Amsplash @JaredMumford last edited by

            Ok,

            having looked at the site I would recommend that the changes are done via server side. I assume the htaccess file is been used to to parse category/subcategory/productname to a controller. Within that controller if the product is found clean the product name with the function below test it against the given url and do a 301 redirect to the cleaned name if they do not match

            function clean_name($string) {    $non_acceptable = '#[^-a-zA-Z0-9 ]#';    $string = preg_replace($non_acceptable, '', $string);    $string = trim($string);     $string = preg_replace('#[-_ ]+#', '-', $string);     return $string;  }

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • JaredMumford
              JaredMumford @Amsplash last edited by

              Hi Merlin  - thank you.

              Here is an example:

              www.domain-name.com/category1/subcategory/product-name-details-(model-number)-length

              needs to change to:

              www.domain-name.com/category1/subcategory/product-name-details-model-number-length

              Any suggestion would be great. Their programmer is having trouble creating a rule.

              Thanks in advance

              Amsplash JaredMumford 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Amsplash
                Amsplash last edited by

                I have 1 or two suggestions. Could you provide an example of the URL? This will allow me to give a more definiive  solution

                JaredMumford 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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