Fixing ?q= Duplicate URLs in Evolution CMS

This article adapts an older community note from the modx.evo.im archive and updates it into a cleaner checklist for current projects.

If a site still exposes both the friendly URL and the legacy ?q= route, search engines can discover multiple addresses for the same page:

https://example.com/folder/page.html
https://example.com/?q=folder/page.html
https://example.com/index.php?q=folder/page.html

Those URLs should not stay indexable side by side. The public address must be the friendly URL, and all fallback variants should resolve to it with a 301 redirect.

What to check first

• Friendly URLs are enabled and working for real resource paths.
• The site does not leave ?q= versions accessible without a redirect.
• /index.php does not behave like a second home page.
• Repeated slashes such as // or //// are normalized.

Typical friendly URL rule

Many Evolution CMS projects still use the classic internal rewrite target:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

That internal rewrite is fine. The problem starts when public requests with ?q= are still reachable from the outside.

What the public behavior should be

https://example.com/?q=folder/page.html           -> 301 -> https://example.com/folder/page.html
https://example.com/index.php?q=folder/page.html -> 301 -> https://example.com/folder/page.html
https://example.com/index.php                     -> 301 -> https://example.com/
https://example.com// or ////                    -> 301 -> normalized URL

Sample Apache rules

Exact rewrite rules always depend on the hosting stack and the rest of the project .htaccess, but the public logic usually looks like this:

# Redirect direct requests to /index.php?q=... to the friendly URL
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/+index\.php\?q=([^\s&]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ /%1? [R=301,L,NE]

# Redirect direct requests to /?q=... to the friendly URL
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s+/\?q=([^\s&]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ /%1? [R=301,L,NE]

# Redirect a visible /index.php request to the home page
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/+index\.php(?:[\s?]|$) [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ / [R=301,L]

# Normalize duplicate slashes in public requests
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} //+
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,L]

Do not copy these rules blindly into production. Test them against your current routing, especially if the project already has redirects for language prefixes, trailing slashes, or custom manager paths.

Why this matters for SEO

• The crawler should see one stable URL per document.
• Internal links should point to the friendly version only.
• Duplicate URL variants waste crawl budget and split signals.
• If canonical tags exist, they should reinforce the final public URL, not fight against broken rewrite behavior.

Verification checklist

• Open the friendly URL and confirm it returns 200.
• Open the ?q= and index.php?q= variants and confirm they return a single 301 to the same friendly URL.
• Check /index.php directly and confirm it resolves to the home page with 301.
• Check bad double-slash variants and confirm they normalize cleanly.
• Run a crawler such as Screaming Frog and confirm the duplicate variants disappear from the internal crawl.

Final note

This is one of those small infrastructure details that quietly damage SEO when left alone. It is worth fixing once and verifying as part of every Evolution CMS launch checklist.