Welcome to the Q&A Forum

like I said, I will email your solution concerning the plugin to my web admin guy, but the reason why I'm kind of reticent to do that is it's more a matter of bureacracy (to be sensitive to his time constraints) rather than technical or lack of know-how. I want to get it done right, but I also want to get it done in a timely manner. But I will forward this to him. Thanks you sir.

thank you sir....I'll try to avoid the htaccess route then.

Yeah I guess this is the only way to go. Now I just got to get the webmaster to get around to it. (sigh)...

I guess my question now is, just doing the htaccess route is a bad idea? in both 301s AND canonicals or just 301s? I guess I'm not looking for easy, but economical. Thanks for your responses.

Yeah, I know, right. The problem is, I found this out only AFTER I bought the PRO version and mapped out the entirety of the site. Some of those ?print URLs are now indexed in the SEs. So I agree with nipping this problem in the bud (or the root, whichever one prefers), but I still need to know how to do it via the htaccess. In other words, I have to go backwards and take care of the rankings, THEN figure out how to turn it off (and I can go to the Magento forums for that).

So, assuming this works, can I eventually remove the ".html?print" versions of the pages after the SEs have changed the URLs in their indices?

also, I'm not getting the impression it's going to save me time on specifying different pages (it may save time, I'm not sure), but in the chance it doesn't or the plugin fails to do as advertised, what is the htaccess option for this? Because at least, in this case, I can see the immediacy in it AND you can do canonical rewrites FROM the htaccess.

My situation is, I'm not  THAT advanced in wildcards to make this happen (otherwise, I'd do it myself via just trial and error until it works) AND I myself don't have access to the site (the webmaster does, whose part time) and I have a choice between "Hey, here's several (or one line) of code to put into htaccess to resolve this problem" OR "can you go through and implement this plug to do the Canonical redirects on every page, oh and by the way, please back up first."

So it's not merely JUST a technical problem or a know-how problem, it's also a bureaucratic problem that can mean the difference between getting it done in a few minutes, and it could take two weeks to make happen depending on this person's perception.

I was answering this Kjay's response while this one was coming down the pipeline. I get you on the fact if they were TRULY identical, but the reason I wanted to do the 301s is because more than likely, the Magento engine is faulty, and I've found situaitons where the prices are different between the two versions, or the images and text haven't been updated, etc. etc., hence, the need for a 301

I guess my question is, if I use JUST the canonical, then the SEs will get around to changing the address, but will still go to the "?print" pages until that time.

Also, the Magento  help aide on that said I had to do it with EACH individual page. It's going to be especially time-consuming to have to go back out into the admin, go back into the admin, and check to see EVERY time the page that I'm canonizing is the right html version. I think this is where accessing the htaccess will save me a bunch of time (I still have to change the title tags on the remaining original 1500 pages, as well as find out from the Magento site, to access the H1 tags in the templates).

If I use the basic 301 redirect, I get the benefit of the immediate redirect, but I fail to see the downside of having to "endure" the 301 redirect other than additional rules for the browser to access the server. I eventually want to get RID of these "?print" pages because I'm getting the feeling that prices won't update as reliably on the ".html?print" version of the pages, update images (which we HAVE had trouble with in the past) etc. etc. And there's also the possibility that people may still access those ?print pages even if I did just do a canonical. It's just better to admin and SEO 1500+ pages as opposed to 1500+ pages and their duplicates.

I guess, what I'm looking for is, more than likely, the syntax command that's going to include a wildcard function to accomodate everything between "http://www.mycompany.com/" and ".html?print" or ".html". What would that look like?

Okay, so if I were in the htaccess file, what would it look like?

would it be a Query string rewrite?

RewriteEngine On

_ RewriteBase /_

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(*)$

RewriteRule ^()html?print$ http://www.mycompany.com/()html$ [R=301]

or just a straight one line redirect

Redirect 301 /()html?print http://www.mycompany.com/().html

I have an issue with a client's website where it has 3700+ pages, but roughly half of them are duplicates. Thankfully, the only difference between the original and the duplictes is the "?print" at the end of each URL (I suppose this is Magento's way of making a printable page version of the same page. I don't know, I didn't build it.)

My questions is, how can I get all the pages like this

http://www.mycompany.com/blah.html?print

to redirect to pages like this...

http://www.mycompany.com/blah.html

Also, do they NEED to be Canonical, or will a 301 redirect be sufficient.

Also, after having done this, if anybody knows, is there a way I can turn that feature off in Magento, because we're expanding our product line, and I don't want to have to keep chasing after these "?print" pages after the fact.