Major bug in the changes to item id's.
With 1.11 all articles whether accessed through the frontpage component, category, blog category, or section had the same url & item id, with 1.11 you were able to assign separate module positions to articles, categories, front page etc.

With 1.12 all this changes - if the article is for example accessed via the front page it is given one item id/url and loads with the same modules that are assigned to the front page, the same article when accessed via a content category is then given another item id/url and so loads the modules assigned to that particular category. But it gets worse as the previous item id/url that the same article was assigned in 1.11 (and indexed by search engines) is also still generated - if you have a large content based site this is a complete disaster as most search engines will view this as 3 separate urls all containing the same article/content, this will cause a duplicate content penalty with Google.

It is also a complete nightmare with module assignment. With 1.11 I have modules assigned in the left and right columns for my content categories but only modules assigned on the right for my articles with 1.12 I'm now unable to do this as I'm stuck with whatever is assigned to the category and again even more problems with the frontpage. For example I display adsense on my articles but I don't want adsense displayed on my home/frontpage but with 1.12 I can't do this.

I'm really hoping this is just a bug and will be fixed as soon as possible.
Same article:
Old url before upgrade: /index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=255&Itemid=28
Accessed from Category url: /index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=255&Itemid=275
From front page: /index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=255&Itemid=190

I am having the same problem...
here is an example of a article accessed from three locations and all different ID's (but they should be the same):
From homepage: http://www.bentonhighschool.com/content/view/954/1/
From "Athletics" link: http://www.bentonhighschool.com/content/view/954/462/
From "Athletics" and then "Football" link: http://www.bentonhighschool.com/content/view/954/553/

the last is how it should be for all links (at least prior to 1.0.12)

I'm also having a nightmare with this. Please see my "bug" report here:

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,125314.0.html

/Andreas

A few things:

1. Corrections were made to v 1.0.12 to fix ItemID problems introduced in v 1.0.10 and .11. Rob outlined those fixes http://dev.joomla.org/component/option, ... ,33/p,240/. Read the Item ID section and see if his descriptions of these fixes help explain changes you are seeing. (For example, Stew, I believe your situation is explained by Rob's blog.)

2. For each unique path your website offers to a specific article, I would *expect* Joomla! to provide a unique URL. The ItemID is "equal to" menu item in Joomla!. If there are three menu items leading to the same article, I would expect three unique URLs. There are so many objects in Joomla! that hook into the ItemID (ex. breadcrumbs, Next and Prev, modules to be shown, templates to be used, etc., etc.). A unique URL is required for all of those other application components to work properly.

3. I am not saying this is good from an SEO perspective, I am saying that from a data architecture perspective, that is exactly how Joomla! (and Mambo) is supposed to behave. If you want to avoid several URLs for the same article in Joomla!, you could create unique "teaser articles" for your frontpage or secondary lists, and link directly to the "real" URL for the "real" article. That way, the content is not exactly the same and the URLs are unique. This should address your SEO concerns. (I know, I know, it may not be ideal, but we have to deal with the reality of how Joomla! works.)

4. ZigZag - technically, modules are *not* assigned to articles or content categories. Modules are assigned to menu items (which are represented by ItemIDs.) So, to fix this, you need to think about what modules you want on each menu item. In my mind, it helps to think of a menu item as a "web page." The purists would jump on me to use that term, but, roughly, that is what a menu item is. Look at each of your menu items and decide what modules should be presented.

5. ZigZag - My biggest sympathies are for the URL changing issue you raise. I don't know how many external links there are to your articles or the volume of changed URLs you are dealing with, but, this could indeed be concerning. I keep thinking this is an htaccess redirect "solution" which is likely not what you want to hear. Maybe someone has another idea? Joomla! needs to implement permalinks at the article level and uncouple the article from the ItemID.

6. V. 1.5 will *not* address these ItemID issues since it represents an application architecture change not a data architecture change. The data model is slated for change in v 2.0. As a final note, the developers know more than any of us how much the ItemID causes problems and are more eager than anyone to change this for v 2.0. 

[Tagged for Q&T 1.0.12]

Hi,

Thanks for the report, we'll be sure to look into it.

Regards Robin

Yes I understand that the modules are assigned to menu items - it's the menu items that I currently have that are blog categories, section lists and of course the frontpage component that I was referring to, basically it's the same as Stew has reported on his site but if these are "fixes" then even forgetting the SEO issue I'm left high and dry as far as Joomla is concerned as 1.12 brings too many limitations to make it workable - my entire site and it's revenue is based around the flexibility of the module positions prior to 1.12.

Yikes. Did RobS's blog explain why you are seeing the changes you are seeing? And, did you have this website up and running prior to v 1.0.10? That is when errors in Joomla! ItemIDs started presenting themselves.

Do you want to share your link to bounce some ideas around about how to resolve this? It sounds like you understand the ItemID functionality. Feel free to email me if you think talking it through with someone might help. AmyStephen@gmail.com.

I am sorry for your troubles. Frustrating.

thanks for your explanation Amy

I want to make sure that I am right and not misreading.
In my example above, that article is assigned to the "Football" link inside the "Athletics" tab at the top. In other words since it was assigned to that link, before 1.0.11, every time one click on that article it displayed like the third link I have provided at the top (that is how I wanted it to because I have all of my "football" related modules assigned - I do not want that article to appear with frontage modules around it)

Is this not going to be possible according to Rob?

Stew -

I believe that is correct. Let's see what Robin indicates after the Q&T team reviews this thread. You have the experts on this, so, you are all in very good hands. 

You have a very nice looking website, BTW.

Best regards, Amy

Hey guys, hopefully I can shed a bit of light on the Itemid changes and explain why we did what we did and hopefully offer up some ideas to help solve your problems.

First, a little background.  From the development perspective, the Itemid system has always been a nasty beast to work with.  It is extremely complicated and very "unreliable".  I put that in quotes because the idea of it being unreliable is somewhat amusing in itself as the system is so strange it varies from person to person whether it is doing the correct thing or not.  The problems with the Itemid system are routinely exacerbated by misuse both on the part of developers and end-users.  In my opinion, it was never intended or really capable of doing many of the things that it is now expected to do.  In truth, the system needs to be completely re-thought and fixed but this is a very uncomfortable task because as I said before, it is a beast to work with and is so notorious for creating problems that most devs won't go near it let alone give the go ahead for someone else to work on it. 

For the Joomla! 1.0.12 release, we attempted to address some of the smaller issues surrounding the greater Itemid system.  In doing this, we simplified the implementation a bit which is why you guys are encountering some of the issues you are.  The most affected aspect of these changes are com_content for sure.  When we were implementing the changes that we made, we tried to only use the Itemid system for the things it does well and dropped some of the things that it did poorly.  This, somewhat by coincidence, is also how Joomla! 1.5 uses the Itemid system. 

To understand where this is going, one must have an idea of what we think the Itemid system should do and what the Itemid system should not do.  I will make it short.  The Itemid should only change when you click on a menu item.  Itemid's are only created when menu items are created and only 1 is created for that specific menu item.  The itemid is not created for the item being linked to, that is almost irrelevant.  The Itemid is tied to the menu item not the item being linked to.  So, logically, it makes sense that the Itemid should only change when the active menu item changes.  This is what the Itemid system was intended to do and this is all it can do reliably. 

In previous versions of Joomla! (1.0.11 included), the Itemid would change when you clicked on an article link on the front-page (when com_frontpage was the front-page component).  In this implementation, the Itemid was (in every sense of the word) guessed.  That is the best it could do.  The reason it could only guess is there are many different Itemids that could be associated with an item and which one to use was just a matter of opinion.  There was a sort of ranking system that tried to find the most specific one and then went down from there but it was still just a guess.  For example, if you had three menu items that all linked directly to the same article, the Itemid chosen for that link could be any of the Itemids for those three menu items.  Obviously, this is not very reliable.  If you deleted or unpublished one of those menu items, the Itemid for the link changed.  Again, this is all in the context of com_content which was trying to do all of this guessing.  There were many problems associated with this system of guessing, it was unreliable, slow, and very confusing.  So, in short, we just removed the guess work.  This will ultimately make Joomla! faster, more reliable and much easier to understand. 

I know that all of this background and explanation does not really address your concerns.  However, I will say that I looked around on stewthompson's site http://www.bentonhighschool.com/ and by this standard, it is working exactly as we intended it to which is something that could never really be said before.  I understand that this is going to cause problems for Joomla! users and for search engines and things of that nature but ultimately I think it was the right choice.  It will require some re-thinking of how Joomla! operates for many users as the Itemid system has always been a bit of a mystery but I think it is far more reliable and usable now than it ever was, even thought it won't try to do some of the things that it used to do.



First, let me try to clarify what I think you are asking as you seem to be mixing terminology.  You have a section that contains all of your sports which I imagine is called "Athletics", inside this section there are different categories, one for each sport.  For example, "Football" is a category as well as "Swimming".  You have an article titled " Brass, Jefferson, Mims and Jones top city, area teams" that is in the "Athletics" section and "Football" category.  This article is not assigned to a menu item.  If the article were assigned to a menu item, there would be a menu item that linked directly to that article.  As far as I can tell, that is not the case.  Thus, the modules that appear around that article will vary depending on how the user navigated to the article.  If they click on the link that is on your front-page, one set of modules will appear whereas if they navigate to that article via the Athletics -> Football -> Article path, a different set of modules may appear.

One possible way to artificially handle this situation is to not use linked titles and manually create "Read more..." links.  By adding static read more links you can use whichever Itemid you like.  Another possible solution is to use redirects that would redirect certain item + Itemids to another item + Itemid combination using something like mod_rewrite for Apache.  There might even be a Joomla! specific module that does this, if not, there should be.  

I hope that I have explained the changes well enough and that the reason and logic behind those changes make sense.  I really do think it is for the better even if it causes some headache right now.

I've been using Joomla since it first came out so this is sad news for me as having spent the last year or so getting the site to where I want it and having paid out for commercial components and templates I suddenly find that Joomla's no longer a usable option, I can't have the front page modules loading in my articles it's just too inflexible - no linked titles and to having to manually create read more links kind of makes the whole frontpage component a bit pointless as the whole idea of CMS is lessen the work load.

Also having the urls for 400 or so articles all change with the 1.12  upgrade is a bit much, I think it's also a bit too much to expect that people should have to totally redesign and start again with their sites. Having spent the day trying to resolve and work around the issues with 1.12 I've found that it is impossible and I think if this is the direction Joomla is heading it will no longer be a viable option for large content based sites.

I'm just half way through a v1.0.12 upgrade and I'm seeing the same problem.  Quote frankly since Andrew Eddie left Joomla! I've sensed a lack of direction and leadership.  The last post is 100% correct.  You can't go around changing major functionalities without a way of having replicating previous functionality ( enable Itemid's ) and expect the community to back you up. 

We are all developing our own projects, but then to find this functionality changed like this is a disaster for the Joomla! project.  If people don't recognise that, then they should not be in charge of software development.

When can we have v1.0.12 with Itemid's as in previous releases.

Another annoyed Joomla! develper / user.

I understand this frustration but I completely agree with the direction the developers have taken. I have logged hours helping with the last two upgrades and the instability of the ItemID has caused so many problems that there were no logical hacks to take care of everyone's situation. The changes Rob is describing have created a predictable use of ItemID.

This does not change the mess you both find yourself in and I do not want to diminish that problem you are facing. It also does not decrease the frustration that you must feel.

I absolutely volunteer to help with dealing with this change if you want assistance and if I can be of any help. I am heartbroken that you are facing this but we can get it to work for you, I am certain. I know it's frustrating and I am sorry about that. We can put you back on track and you will be better aligned for v 1.5. Grrrrrr. I am sorry for this, I really am.

Please feel free to email me if you want to have another set of eyes on the problem. 

Amy
AmyStephen@gmail.com

Perhaps you guys would be interested in a solution to have the old behavior back:

components/com_content/content.html.php line ~397


Change that line to:


same file, line ~556


Remove that line and paste in:

In one way I'm lucky because my site wasn't live yet. I was going to go live on Jan 01. When I saw the 'minor' patch release I went ahead and applied it thinking I should do it now before going live. I currently have 384 articles. Mine is was going to be a very content rich site.

I have to agree with zigzag on this. This "patch" has forced me into a position of a major redesign days before a planned roll out. This wasn't a minor change. This should have been called 1.2, not 1.12. Of course I could just roll back to 1.11, but I'm not sure what to do now. There's 4 other authors involved and we all haven't had the chance to see how bad this new change has affected the overall design. From what we see so far, it's a nightmare. All I can say for sure is that this isn't a good thing at all.

A minor change like this is something you would expect to see on a roadmap. This isn't a minor change. It has broken our design strategy completely. (We were doing reviews. The majority of the content can be would have been accessed through multiple module/menu/options).

After reading what Rob wrote, and maybe I am missing something here, but it sounds as if it's going to get worse before it gets better. Rolling out a new site, SEO is critical. I'm having a hard time justifying a campaign based upon a freshly broken CMS.

I guess we all live and learn. I put my eggs into opensource when I should have gone commercial. The advantage Joomla had was we were able to work with a full version and try many things out with it. (That's was the disadvantage of most of the commercial products we were looking at, we couldn't get a full demo.) 1.5 and supporting products were too far down the road. We thought we'd be safe for at least another six months. We thought wrong.

I don't care about the add ons and templates we purchased, it's the lost time that can't be replaced or monetized.

Works perfectly Rob...thanks for your help and your insight!
I know that may be something that I will have to hack each new release, which is ok with me, but will this still work for 1.5?

Yep, I already worked out that the change must of been in the content component somewhere.

For me the Itemid represents the section that the article will be displayed in.  Rightly or wrongly this is how it looks and is being used on my site.  I will look at the work around but I agree with most here.  In short, presentation of our content is how we are working.  One of the major ways in describing how our content will be displayed and what it is is from the resulting URL string.  If this functionality is dramatically changed overnight, you can expect some comments.

In general I think Joomla! is great, I'd personally like to see more engaging the masses from the main Joomla! site as to what is required out there and what can be delivered.  I think Joomla! grew from Andrew Eddie's idea or a usable CMS, since he has left, we are still missing that special someone to replace him and drive it forward.

Joomla! 1.5 will work similarly to 1.0.12.  Itemids only change when menu items change but the affects are somewhat different because Joomla! 1.5 is more clever in the way it binds things.  For example, in 1.0.12 the pathway is dependent on the path in which the item was navigated to and the Itemid, this is not the case for 1.5 as the pathway is derived differently.  I cannot offer a full explanation of the changes but 1.5's behavior is much closer to 1.0.12's behavior than 1.0.11 as far as I know.

I understand what you are saying and that is what I meant by misuse.  The Itemid system was not intended to handle that which, in part, has lead to a long history of bugs related to its use.  I knew people were going to have comments regarding this change.  I knew this would make some people upset and I knew it would please others.  This is just the way it goes, some people want Itemid fixed so that it works others want it left alone.  There is no way to please everyone and I don't expect to.  We are all doing our best to make Joomla! as good as it can be. 



Well, Andrew Eddie never left in full, he is still very active in Joomla! development and even spent time working on 1.0.12.  It is true that he is no longer the project lead but he is still very involved in the project.

Rob - Good work.

Thanks Rob

Just to report that it works fine here too, thanks and I don't have too much issue with this core hack either.

It's late here, but to summarize, as there is no Menu link to the content, there is no fixed place for the content, so we decide to decorate it on where the user found the content?  Is that right?

Perhaps this could be implemented as a switch.  Fixed Content Decoration or Floating? 

That is correct.

I'm still around

/chief waves

Thank you  the hack works here too, and it's a very big relief.

I'm going to insert the hack myself now [EDIT: THE HACK WORKED FINE HERE ALSO], but for future knowledge how do I get a Ie. User1 module to only show on the frontpage and not any other pages with this new item id fix?

An example
On the frontpage on most templates in template clubs the user modules are used extensively on frontpages only to display Ie. urgent news or other things: http://www.rockettheme.com/Templates/Av ... Templates/

Cheers,
Andreas

Can't add much to this discussion that not has been well-said by mod_writer and PhilC.

You cannot simply change an issue with major impact and declare the created major heap of work a problem for content managers. This is very unwanted from user perspective...

Robs: where are those happy users? By the way: thanks for the fix.

I plead for hiring a professional requirements analyst who will keep user interests as a restraint for development and always takes legacy as a given. Throw some adsense in it and hire him/her; it will be a major improvement.
Also, less worries for developers who generally don't like user problems. I detect a big loss in user focus and a hunger for techno push [like 1.5] that will imho push average Joomla! users like me over the cliff.

Totally agree and well said.

Happy user, here! Anything that the developer team can do to build in a more predictable use of ItemID is good, in my opinion. (Of course, that is an unfair argument to suggest there are no happy users just because they don't post. Most happy users are happily going about their business.)

+++++

To provide a perspective you might not understand. The ItemID is our nemesis. Do a quick search on ItemID and force yourself to read a few threads on the complexity of this data entity and the problems it has caused over the years.

I think Andrew Eddie is great, too, really great! But, the ItemID started reeking havoc on our land before his tenure as leader began, and it reared its ugly head all the way through his monarchy.  Johan Janssen inherited ItemID, as did Andrew Eddie. This monster has caused trouble for years!

Here's some fun reading from a post created on September 07, 2005, read 17,137 times, entitled "WIP: ItemID problems - Possible solutions/workarounds" < http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,4259.0.html >. Its accompanying discussion has been read 16,430 times and has 107 responses. < http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,42646.0.html >. I think of those pieces as the ItemID rap sheet.

So, yes, as a "user" and as someone who has been around watching upgrades and seeing problems emerge, I support any forward movement building a more predictable use of ItemID until Joomla! v 2.0 comes and the ItemID can be replaced with a correct data structure, more appropriate for its purpose.

+++++

I want to respond to the concerns raised that a "major" change was made causing this disruption. I hope it is starting to become obvious that the common expectation regarding Joomla! that those of you in this thread share, came as a bit of a surprise. I know that might sound ridiculous since there are a group of you, but that is exactly the type of impact ItemID changes create.

Unknown ItemID usage presents itself in groups of people.

You might be wondering why any ItemID changes were made if such changes tend to cause other problems. I am quite certain that ItemID changes are only made when the developers believe such changes are absolutely required.

Do some research on the v 1.0.10 and v 1.0.11 upgrades and you will find a number of hacks shared between community members to return certain application behaviors. Some hacks were to correct application errors; other hacks returned ability for some quirky "misuses" of Joomla! to pre-upgrade states. Some wanted this hack, but not this one, and others the opposite. Obviously, people hacking the code in different directions is not going to bode well over time. This is an FAQ I wrote after the 1.0.10 upgrade to help users linking directly to Content Items < http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,83148.0.html >.

So, yes, as a "user," I absolutely support any movement towards a common predictable behavior of ItemID.  At the same time, I understand that might mean we have to solve other problems, like SEO Optimization, in different ways, but at least we will be on same page with the same expectation and are therefore finally able to discuss a resolution with common understandings.

Also, I am not certain there is an SEO impact anymore. I want to point to a post by Alledia on December 8th where he shared "according to an interview with Vanessa Fox from Google, there will be no penalty for having duplicate content (that is: having many URLs pointing to the same page)." < http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,121073.0.html >.

+++++

I am impressed that Rob responded to you all so quickly. And, it just continues to blow me away to see how "minor" code changes (in terms of lines of code) can create such a "major" impact in terms for those who expect Joomla! to behave a certain way that it was never intended to behave.

It is possible that everyone in the world who uses Joomla! will respond in a negative way to this change when they upgrade to v 1.0.12 and those few lines of code will have to be rolled back into the core. I am certain that if there is a major public backlash, our developers will do exactly that! People do not give this freely of themselves without caring about those they serve. We rely on our developers to "think" for us about these very technical issues and to do the best that they can with the knowledge they have available.

I appreciate the candor and overall the kindness in which you all responded to this change. I can see how it impacted many of your implementations in a tremendously disruptive way, but, everyone tried to stay friendly and that is appreciated. I completely support and encourage the developers to keep working on these ItemID issues and to continue to respond in such a prompt and positive way to community feedback.

Joomla! is a free, open source product and it's direction and development are entirely at discretion of the developers (and THANK-YOU to all the devs!!!!).

I think changes that we are talking about in this thread and many others on the forum go with the territory (i.e. open source). If you want a closed, locked in product with dedicated and customized support, i believe numerous vendors will be interested in your cash. Or rather, you should look to the vendors of the commercial add-ons you purchased for Joomla. Perhaps they have offered some guarantee/warranty? That last bit is tongue-in-cheek of course since guaranteeing a product to be compatible with future upgrades sounds like bad business sense.

I guess in my mind, the GPL says it all (their CAPS, not mine):

"BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU."

Welcome to the jungle.

I meant it was sad (for me) to have used it all this time and then to find a major change had made it unusable for me, the components that I purchased are ok with 1.12 and they do offer excellent support anyway as does the whole Joomla community. The hack for the item id that Robs kindly supplied has worked so for the moment at least I can continue to use Joomla and am very pleased to be able to.

I know that the item id thing does need sorting out but I also think the primary consideration for any CMS is flexibility of layout, pre 1.12 you could choose exactly what modules you'd like to display from a catego