Thanks for stopping by and I’m glad you found the post useful! :)

Thanks for this great post. I was astounded that w3 total cache removed the native function of wordpress to automatically canonicalise urls. I only found this by chance by using the woorank website analysis tool.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a great plugin and really performs admirably for increasing page speed, but this is an issue that needs to be addressed or at least warned about by the w3 total cache developers.

Your solution will suffice, as this is how I am used to canonicalising the htaccess and was something that I was considering performing. I just wanted to check to see if this was a common problem and it appears to be.

Cheers

For those who prefer a web-based solution for checking to make sure a new 301 redirect is working properly, check out the “Advanced” tool from SEO Browser. A nice, quick solution that provides a great snapshot of how the search engines see your site.

#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|css|js|pl|txt|xml)$

If you wish to redirect www to non-www (my personal choice in most cases) do this:

# redirect www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

And if you wish to force a trailing slash on the end of URLs that do not have a suffix, you can add:

# Force trailing slash
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|css|js|pl|txt|xml)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1/ [QSA,L,R=301]

These are tried and true and work for me, your mileage may vary, yada yada yada. ALWAYS download a backup of your .htaccess file (and rename it with the date) before you do anything, so you can restore it if you fumble.

Finally, I highly recommend you install the Firefox plugin HTTP Live Headers to check your work.

If it comes down to a way to prove you are the original creator other than the comment dates (that could be faked with a bit of effort) a simple phone call to Welcome Home Pet Sitting and asking which one of you is REALLY a partner there would probably do the trick as well. On his about page, also, the link after his claim to be a partner still links back to your site, too. ;)

If this is stuff you already know and were keeping it (or want to keep it) under wraps so he won’t scramble to fix it, feel free to not approve this comment – I won’t take it personally. Hopefully he’ll pull it without need to go further. DMCA works, but it takes time and effort.