URLs and redirection

Permalink
Hey guys !

Last week i just moved my new personal website online with the freshly "finished" custom theme i worked on since few months (this is my first theme / block templates built on C5, i m not developer).
This is not a promoting request at all, but that would be very nice if you can take just few minutes and have a look to give me general feedback.
(website language is french and i didnt plan to set up a whole multilanguage site, but the navigation and main data is english viewers friendly)

http://mattpesquet.com

>> I have specific question about URLs and redirection, especially about Canonical URLs :

Actually i have pretty Urls turned ON, everything works fine.
I also have a SSL certificate and i would prefer to promote the 'https://' link to my website.
I want to set up correctly Canonical URLs, and i dont want to break anything or choose a weird set up, and as i m not developper i kinda have no deep knowledge about how those things technically work.
First thing, I have read that this is not good for SEO and search engines to have the website "available" at the same time at mattpesquet.com andhttp://www.mattpesquet.com.
With the SSL url, that gives also 2 other possibilities (i put it in code tag, to not display weird links in post)
http://m...
https://m...
http://www.m...
https://www.m...


So from what i get, the canonical urls is the way to deal with that, and should be setup to anything for the best SEO and ranking.

Should i be good if i set Canonical Url tohttp://mattpesquet.com and select 'Only render at canonical URLs' ?
If i understand, that will be the url always displayed and used, and every user trying to reach other urls are redirected to the canonical one ?

Also, my C5 french dashboard display 'URL canonique alternative' for the second slot, instead of 'SSL URL' in documentation.
Does that mean that this second slot is especially for SSL Url, and SSL Url shouldnt be set in canonical Url first slot ?
I see that placeholder text 'http://domain.com' on first slot, and 'https://domain.com' on second one.

And last question, i guess that it is better to choose the same choice on both canonical urls ?
i mean if canonical url have to behttp://www.domain.com it have to be the same for 'alternative canonical url' (or SSL url) ? or could it be domain.com ?
Is there any difference to choose anything ?

Thank you very much to read me.
Best regards

 
MattPesquet replied on at Permalink Reply
That would be very nice to get an input or a little help from someone.

How to set up correctly canonical URLs ? what is the best solution if there is one ?

Is it better to handle redirection from server side ?

Thx someone
Gondwana replied on at Permalink Reply
Gondwana
I really hope you get an answer. I've avoided using canonical URLs in c5 because I can't find any helpful doco. You expressed the question beautifully.
MattPesquet replied on at Permalink Reply
@Gondwana > I dont know if that will help you, but at least it might help other people that never get a reply on clearly expressed question, that have never been clearly answered anywhere.

I managed to have everything working fine, i have set a 301 redirection on server side (via Cpanel), there is few options to tell if you include both www. or no www. url in the redirection rule (all that can be done via .htaccess and i m sure there is pieces of code around with the lines of code to add).
As a side note, i choosed to redirect to my main domain (its important to check if your main domain is www. or without www.) in my case mattpesquet.com without www.
I m not sure if there is a difference, as i m not an expert and i did get the luck to have just a random C5 dev answering in 20secondes what must be hugely basic knowledge for him, but it seems it is better than redirecting your main domain to the other URL (for example if i'd redirect mattpesquet.com tohttp://www.mattpesquet.com).
I m redirecting to the HTTPS:// url ofcourse, on C5 dashboard side, i have setup canonical Urls to the same url for the redirectionhttp://mattpesquet.com, and i checked always use canonical URLs.
This setup makes redirecting everything (with www. without www, http:// and https://) to the same Url.

I hope it helps, good luck.

PS: I trully discourage any depressed people to come on this board to find usefull and basic help from expert, that might be very damageable for their futur. As a personal experience, there is one year+ that i have to reply to myself, on i think never clearly covered answer for just not pro devs, that wants to learn...my first experience to opensource world ! haha :)