Title: Weird string causing 404s Last modified: January 27, 2018 --- # Weird string causing 404s * Resolved [mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/) * (@mdotk) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/) * Hello, I’ve noticed in my 404 logs that a strange string is being added to some URLs and causing a 404: * `number>;crid=1833;check_container=true` * Is there a way to wildcard any match so that the plugin just strips off that string and 301s to the proper URL. ie example.com/post/number>;crid=1833;check_container =true goes to example.com/post/ * Thanks! Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total) * Plugin Author [John Godley](https://wordpress.org/support/users/johnny5/) * (@johnny5) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9908868) * Sure, you can use a regular expression to match that particular pattern. If it always happens at the end of URL you could use this as the source: * `number>;crid=1833;check_container=true$` * Thread Starter [mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/) * (@mdotk) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9909467) * Sorry what would be the regular expression? * Are you saying I need one redirect per URL on my website? * I was hoping for something like: * 1. In the top box enter “*/number>;crid=1833;check_container=true$” 2. In the bottom box enter “*” * Thread Starter [mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/) * (@mdotk) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9909488) * Hi again, in fact even when I manually add the URLs to redirect, it still 404s. * It seems like there is characters in that string “number>;crid=1833;check_container =true$” that stop the redirect working. I discovered another such string too “[ object Object]” * [CEMBTW](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cembtw/) * (@cembtw) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9914168) * In “[object Object]”, the brackets will have to be escaped as “\[object Object\]” All the characters in your “number” url should be safe, though. Use this tool to test various regex matches: [https://regex101.com](https://regex101.com) * Thread Starter [mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/) * (@mdotk) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9915007) * Thank you, I am still really struggling to get matches. * I made a regex (box ticked) rule like /directory/.* redirecting to /directory/ and then that page /directory/ goes into a redirect loop and won’t display. Chrome says “XXX has redirected you too many times” * Also, anything I put in like /post-abc/number>;crid=1833;check_container=true $ redirecting to /post-abc/ also still returns a 404 * I exported my settings, deleted and reinstalled the plugin and looked for any duplicates and still these problems persist. - This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by [mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/). * [CEMBTW](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cembtw/) * (@cembtw) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9919817) * [@mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/) * > * Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, > giving back as needed (greedy) * So `/directory/` will always match your pattern of `\/directory\/.*` (remember to escape special characters) and loop. * If you want all characters after `/directory/` removed, then you could do something like `\/directory\/\S.*` or `\/directory\/\S+`. Try it in regex101, and hover over each part to see what they would accomplish. * You can also get more information about what is happening during a redirect loop with this tool: [http://redirectcheck.com/index.php](http://redirectcheck.com/index.php) * Thread Starter [mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/) * (@mdotk) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9919957) * [@cembtw](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cembtw/) thanks that is really helpful, I have got it working now * I did some exploring on that site and it seems you can substitute out things. So I tried * `(number%3E;crid=1833;check_container=true34234)+` * Which should capture the text I want to delete/remove from the URL string, but then I can’t work out how to “redirect it” to whatever URL preceeded that string. This would mean that instead of doing individual redirects for every single post, I could just have one statement/rule that gets rid of that string. - This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by [mdotk](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mdotk/). * [CEMBTW](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cembtw/) * (@cembtw) * [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9928665) * You could have another capture group to collect the text before our bad string: ` ^(.*)(number>;crid=1833;check_container=true)$` * So now we have two capture groups, which the plugin treats as “$1” and “$2”, and can set the target URL as: `$1`. Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total) The topic ‘Weird string causing 404s’ is closed to new replies. * ![](https://ps.w.org/redirection/assets/icon-256x256.jpg?rev=983639) * [Redirection](https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/) * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/#faq) * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/redirection/) * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/redirection/active/) * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/redirection/unresolved/) * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/redirection/reviews/) * 8 replies * 3 participants * Last reply from: [CEMBTW](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cembtw/) * Last activity: [8 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/weird-string-causing-404s/#post-9928665) * Status: resolved