Hey Greg
It might be a conflict with the plugin or something perhaps, but when I try adding a rewrite rule in the htaccess file, it doesn't work. I tried a few, including adding it directly from cpanel. This below looks like it should work, but doesn't seem to
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^stock/index\-3\.html$ http://www.example.com/stock/wildlife-photos/ [R=301,L]
That's in the root directory htaccess file .. I tried it as /index-3\html as well. I added a folder under 'stock' called 'wildlife-photos' .. i even tried adding the htaccess line in the "stock" directory, and modified it to fit accordingly, but nothing works.
I tried a simple Redirect 301 line in the root directory .. but it says nothing is sound .. and when I do that, it always adds a "?cat=3" after the rewritten url, in the url .. so http://www.example.com/stock/wildlife-photos/
becomes http://www.example.com/stock/wildlife-photos/?cat=3
Actually, I think (I don't TOTALLY understand, but I think) what you're doing is the opposite. You can provide a clean link via email or in your navigation bar even, that redirects to the dynamic url when visited. What I want is a rewrite, that rewrites something like
example.com/gallery/index.php?cat=3
to something like
example.com/gallery/plane-photos/
So the actual url in the url bar at the top of the browser is the 2nd one. This is what the plugin does for images and for albums .. not for categories .. and it doesn't allow me to manually write one at all. Which would be ideal. Even better would be a setup where any of the images then linked from that category or album, for example, would be in the next directory
example.com/plane-photos/002-image.html
or
example.com/plane-photos/B52s/001-image.html
and so on.
I would've thought something simple like
RewriteRule ^(.*)/index-3\.html$ http://www.example.com/stock/wildlife-photos/ [R=301,L]
in either the root directory OR the the 'stock' directory (losing the word 'stock' after rewrite rule) should work, but it doesn't. This COULD be because of a possible conflict with the plugin? Maybe?
Note - the above line
RewriteRule ^(.*)/index-3\.html$ http://www.example.com/stock/wildlife-photos/ [R=301,L]
is close .. it redirects, but it doesn't find a page at that url. Same thing if I make the redirected url ../wildlife-photos.html it produces a 404.
A plugin, or a hack in CPG that simple allows you to go to the CPG admin, go to Category Properties, or Album Properties, and rewrite the url there would be best and simplest.
NB: I know some of the people who used to frequent these forums (including developers) repeatedly claimed that CPG works 'as is' for SEO, but there's no question at all that having some keywords in the url helps SEP. It doesn't work to stack the url with lots of them, and the deeper they are in the directory structure, the less juice they retain .. but it's definitely the case that a simple, well phrased url helps gain better SEP.