magento url rewrite prevent -1 or -2

Question

I have a category created which contains url key as - "sofa" and url generated is "sofa.html". URL rewrites system record generated as follows :

ID Path : category/5
Request path : sofa.html
Target Path : catalog/category/view/id/5

Now I want to run one of the custom module over that url(sofa.html) so I deleted system url rewrites and added custom url rewrites from the backend as follows :

ID path : alternate-sofa
Request path : sofa.html
Target path : alternate-sofa

So when I run sofa.html from the browser, I got the expected page from the custom module and it resolves the issue removing custom rewrites after reindexing, though after reindexing new system record added as follows :

ID path : category/5
Request path : sofa-1.html
Target path : catalog/category/view/id/5

Now, I am having issue as follows : On the page, I am listing out categories on left side which contains category url as "sofa-1.html" which is displaying my category layout instead of custom module. How to overcome this issue? I don't want to create sofa-1.html, sofa-2.html, onwards.

Edit : I refereed http://jc-designs.net/blog/2012/09/magento-adding-cms-pages-to-the-main-navigation/ and http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base/entry/adding-page-links-in-the-navigation-bar but when I set 301(permenant), url changed from "sofa.html" to "alternate-sofa" which is not expected url in the browser.

Answer 1

You cant simply prevent this, as there are cases, where it could make sense, like when you have products whith the same url key.

Additionally this is caused by a bug in magento, which has severel possible bugfixes, some of them described in Magento core_url_rewrite table excessively large

Answer 2

You need to change the settings in admin under System -> Configuration -> Catalogue -> Catalogue -> Search Engine Optimisation -> Category URL Suffix - This should be ".html", you just need to change it to BLANK. Once done then delete all the entries from core_url_rewrite table for all the categories using the following query -:

DELETE FROM core_url_rewrite WHERE product_id IS NULL AND LENGTH(category_id)>0

N.B - Please take DB back up prior to run any update/insert/delete queries on production server

Hope it helps

Cheers S

Answer 3

The way I handled -1 or -2 in the url's is making sure all index processes are done or set on manual index. Then in the URL Rewrite manager I search for all requested paths with -1 and remove them. Reindex catalog URL Rewrites and they should be resolved.