ok now that seemed to have worked. i did not go delete them though becasue there were to many, i just purged urls.

but now i'm stuck with urls like,
www.longboardingsa.co.za/decks/decks/db-.../the-lunch-tray.html
poiting to the site that ends in 404 errors.

Have a look on my facebook page at all those links not working:
www.facebook.com/longboarding.south.africa

any ideas on catching those now? there's only 8 categories and no sub categories, so there should be a simple solution?

If there are only 8 of them you could create the 301 redirections manually in JoomSEF's 301 Redirects manager. Just follow this guide:
1. Open the JoomSEF's 301 Redirects manager
2. Click the New button in the toolbar
3. Set Moved from URL to "decks/decks/db-longboards/the-lunch-tray.html" (the wrong URL)
4. Set Moved to URL to "shop/decks/db-longboards/the-lunch-tray.html" (the correct URL)
5. Click Save & Close button in the toolbar

Repeat the steps for other categories.

what i meant was, there's 8 categories, there's way more urls with that problem than 8. each category has many many products so all those urls are floating around out there on fb and google.

I see, sorry, I understand now.

In that case you could use the following RewriteRule in .htaccess file for each category (this is an example for decks):


Just change the decks parts according to your categories.

thanks dude, you're being very helpful.
i've added this to my .htaccess:
RewriteRule completes/completes/(.*) shop/completes/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule decks/decks/(.*) shop/decks/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule wheels/wheels/(.*) shop/wheels/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule trucks/trucks/(.*) shop/trucks/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule bushings/bushings/(.*) shop/bushings/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule safety-gear/safety-gear/(.*) shop/safety-gear/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule accessories/accessories/(.*) shop/accessories/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule sweet-deals/sweet-deals/(.*) shop/sweet-deals/$1 [R=301,L]

it's not working though:
www.longboardingsa.co.za/decks/decks/db-.../the-lunch-tray.html

Try adding the slash to the beginning of the rule, like:
RewriteRule /decks/decks/(.*) /shop/decks/$1 [R=301,L]