Unable to redirect a category in Magento using URL Rewrites

Question

Been banging my head for the past few hours :)

I have a category (id:46) in Magento which is being deactivated and I would like to redirect either to another category or just to the landing page. I've removed the system redirect from the URL rewrite rules and following these guides http://www.aotearoadesigns.net/blog/magento-categories-1-product http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/modules_reference/English/Mage_Adminhtml/urlrewrite/index I have so far tried the following:

ID Path: category/46 Request Path: shops/friendly-uri Target path: catalog/product/view/id/3111/category/52 (to redirect to a product)

I have also tried setting other category ids, and just random values for ID Path, various other urls for Target path, making category both active and inactive.

Nothing seems to work. At the same time when I try to do a redirect from a non shop path "any-uri" it seems to work fine.

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Try using this extension, it is basically for mass redirections:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/optimise-web-mass-301-redirects-1589.html

Please note thought, this does not allow you to mass redirect categories and the above method is much preferred for this.

Answer 2

First find and delete the path for category 46 Catalog -> Manage URL Rewrite -> Search in ID Path "category/46" then delete it. Next create the re-write Catalog -> Manage URL Rewrite -> Add URL Rewrite -> select "Custom" from the dropdown ID Path: category/46 Request Path: shops/friendly-url Target Path: catalog/product/view/id/3111/category/52

If you wanted to go to one of your pages then find the Target Path by going to CMS -> Pages and then look at the URL key and use that in place of "catalog/product/view/id/3111/category/52" If you still can't get a redirect to the CMS page then maybe your Request path is incorrect.

You stated "nothing seems to work" but you didn't list any specific issues you were having so I can't help you troubleshoot, I can only tell you the steps to take. Maybe going back through and trying these again you will solve the issue. I hope this helps.