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PHPSESSID in your URL? Learn to 301 redirect them with PHP

30 March 2007 | 19 Comments | Tags ,

I’m doing some work on a site which has like 4,500 pages indexed with a PHPSESSID in the URL, causing some major duplicate content problems. I got the server admin to disable the PHPSESSID’s by adding the following to the vhost config:

[code]php_value session.use_trans_sid 0
php_value session.use_only_cookies 1[/code]

I also wanted Google to get a clean URL when it decided to spider one of the old URL’s again, and didn’t have access to mod_rewrite, so I redirected them with some PHP. The solution is quite simple:

[code]if (isset($_GET[‘PHPSESSID’])) {
$requesturi = preg_replace(‘/?PHPSESSID=[^&]+/’,””,$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);
$requesturi = preg_replace(‘/&PHPSESSID=[^&]+/’,””,$requesturi);
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://”.$_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’].$requesturi);
exit;
}[/code]

Joost de Valk

Joost is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Yoast. He has a long history in WordPress and digital marketing. On our blog, he has written a lot about SEO in general, technical SEO and important topics related to SEO.

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Discussion (19)

  1. Misko
    Misko May. 14, 2009

    Hi!
    Where did you change/put that code exactly? Where is the “vhost config”?
    thanx a lot!

  2. Boogie
    Boogie Apr. 16, 2009

    Hi, thanks für this easy to use solution.
    I modified the regexp code:
    $requesturi = preg_replace(‘/[.|?|&]PHPSESSID=[^&]+/’,””,$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);

  3. Scritube
    Scritube Mar. 31, 2009

    PHPSESSID can’t be used for that.

    but try on you header :

  4. Milan
    Milan Mar. 23, 2009

    And how to stop WordPress and other scripts from creating cookies with PHPSESSID? I don’t see their use and they are only wasted bandwidth.

  5. Crispijn
    Crispijn Jun. 07, 2008

    Very nice feature! I solved the prob really quick!

  6. OK85
    OK85 Apr. 23, 2008

    But by using the redirection you will loose all data stored in sessions, don’t you?

  7. Robert
    Robert Mar. 31, 2008

    I got this problem:
    Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: Compilation failed: nothing to repeat at offset 0 in …

    and solved it like that:

    $requesturi = preg_replace(‘/&PHPSESSID=[^&]+/’,””,$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);
    $requesturi = preg_replace(‘/PHPSESSID=[^&]+/’,””,$requesturi);

  8. fra
    fra Feb. 04, 2008

    hi joost
    i am having the same problem here. since i dont know anything about coding i wanted to ask you if i have to place the second code you provided in this post in the php.ini file as well…thanks!

  9. Chris Brown
    Chris Brown Jan. 14, 2008

    Thanks for sharing. Very nice trick :)

  10. Dainų tekstai
    Dainų tekstai Dec. 13, 2007

    Thanks for it. Very useful. But there is any solution with PhP to leave previos url when page redirect to new page?

  11. Jens
    Jens Jul. 02, 2007

    Short and sweet. I really have problems with Session-IDs in WordPress. I will try your hint! But I really wonder, that there is no wordpress plugin for the redirection of session-id-spamed urls… should not be too difficult…

  12. Joost de Valk
    Joost de Valk Mar. 30, 2007

    no probs, I just know they don’t like it when you link to a local mirror :)

  13. Arjan Eising
    Arjan Eising Mar. 30, 2007

    Ah damn, sorry for that one. PHP.net automatically redirects to the Dutch version, so I didn’t notice it.

  14. Joost de Valk
    Joost de Valk Mar. 30, 2007

    very true Arjan, thx! (and sorry, I edited your comment to change the link to php.net instead of nl.php.net :) )

  15. Arjan Eising
    Arjan Eising Mar. 30, 2007

    Thanks for sharing this Joost. Note that if you haven’t access to the ini files, this parameters can set by using the ini_set function.