Duplicate content issues with the news module

[JM6891]

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone else has come across this and has a fix? I'm experiencing duplicate content issues with the News module.

I added the {news} tag to a page with the alias called 'news' whose content id is 20

If I add a post it is accessible via:

;http://www.website.com/news/9/20/story.html

Which is the correct url but it is also accessible via:

;http://www.website.com/news/9/15/story.html

The 15 in the url above is the content ID of the home page and the post content appears within the home page template. If I change this number to another content ID the news appears on those URLs too.

This is causing duplicate content issues. Also, this news post is indexing on Google via the '15' url above, when really it needs to by via the '20' url only.

Has anyone else experienced this and knows how to fix?

Thank you

[JM6891]

I forgot to mention I'm using cmsms 1.11.8

[velden]

I don't think you can avoid duplicate content but you can prevent it from being indexed.

That's where the canonical url is for. In the cmsms default templates those are used iirc.

[JM6891]

Hi there

Thank you very much for your reply. I have the following in place already:

<link rel="canonical" href="{if isset($canonical)}{$canonical}{elseif isset($content_obj)}{$content_obj->GetURL()}{/if}" />

However, the canoncial url for:

;http://www.website.com/news/9/20/story.html

is actually

;http://www.website.com/news/9/15/story.html

I guess this explains why this url is being indexed over the other one - but why is this happening?

[JM6891]

Hi all,

I have taken a look at this and I believe the lies within one of the news module settings. Under the options tab you select the default page to use for detail views. The canonical url is now setting correctly.

[velden]

Nice.

ps. please don't use fake urls in your posts. They become clickable.
IIRC if you type an apostrophe in front of the url they won't be recognized as link.

(unless you're really working @ 'www.website.com)