XF 2.2 Redirect chain for my domain

[Anatoliy]

So I'm scanning my forum with the Site Audit tool from Ahrefs, and it throws at me a "Redirect chain" warning.
http://mydomain.com > https://mydomain.com > https://www.mydomain.com. It also states, that at some point Google started to tread redirect chains as 404, so it means that I'm losing a lot of old incoming links (that were created before https became wildly spread). So of course I'd like to fix it.
But I have no idea how and where. )

Is it from XenForo Redirects for vBulletin? Is it from Cloudflares "force all to https" (or whatever they call it)?

I have "https://www.mydomain.com" in ACP > Options > Basic options.
"Enable board URL canonicalization" is checked.

How should it be set properly? Please help.

 

[Anatoliy]

Never mind. Figured it out. It was Cloudflare's "Always Use HTTPS".

 

[Anatoliy]

I do need help with Redirect Chains after all. )
I discovered 20 redirect chains, I have to fix them, but not sure how.

So I was "improving" site visibility. I merged threads and edited their titles. The funniest part is that I choose the "top landing pages". Now they all dropped in serps.

Here is an example.
https://www.oregonfishingforum.com/threads/yaquina-bay-report.615186/ was merged into
https://www.oregonfishingforum.com/threads/yaquina-bay.615107/ and then was renamed into

Yaquina Bay Fishing Reports

Went out last Saturday 10/20/18 for some crabbing and rockfish. Dropped 6 pots for three guys with our favorite trusted crab bait cure about 2.5 hours before high tide. went out past the bridge bite was very slow to pick up. Right before high slack, the bite kicked on and we quickly picked up...

www.oregonfishingforum.com

So now a request to the first url is redirected twice. What would be the correct way to fix such a problem?
Should I just go ahead and create 301 redirect from the first url to the third, using "Custom 404 page" add-on?
Or it will add the 3rd redirect in a chain?

 

[Anatoliy]

Actually, I can't create a 301 redirect from the first url to the third with https://xenforo.com/community/threads/custom-404-page-by-siropu.165650/.

So, where are in XenForo those redirects and how to redirect those redirects directly to the target page, and not through a chain of redirections?

 

[Anatoliy]

ok. I guess I found it. xf_thread_redirect table.
thread_id:615186, target_url:threads/yaquina-bay.615107/, redirect_key:thread-615107-41-, expiry:date:1614465724

I remember I was told by xF support "never ever change anything in the database directly from phpMyAdmin!"...
soo... how should I proceed with this one?

maybe I could just change the target_url from 'threads/yaquina-bay.615107/' to 'threads/yaquina-bay-fishing-reports.615107/' ?

 

[Anatoliy]

 

[Anatoliy]

Every day you don't answer, Chuck Norris kills a little cute kitten.

 

[Paul B]

If it's just for 20 or so URLs, add rewrite rules to .htaccess.

 

[Seeker-Smith]

Thank goodness no more dead kittens.

 

[Anatoliy]

If it's just for 20 or so URLs, add rewrite rules to .htaccess.

Thank you, Brogan!

 

[Anatoliy]

I guess I found the root of my problem with redirect chains.
I search in ACP > Forums > Batch update threads, check "Thread type: Redirect", and I get

Oops! We ran into some problems.​

No items matched your filter.

I was sure that there are no redirect links left in my forums. But they are there. About 70. I scanned my forum with MOZ crawler and it gave me a list.

So is something corrupted in my system, or is it a bug in XF 2.2.3 P1?