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I have started to analyse the behaviour of content & menu itemid's for the 1.0.10 platform. Indeed there are many existing posts in the forum, but none seem to offer a definitive answer to identify the problems & possible solutions (are the existing posts still valid with the latest built ?).

The basic idea is pretty simple: Check that the overall navigation of a joomla install is 100% coherent (focus on active state), and that the pathway behaviour is also 100% coherent.

This is a complex subject, as it highly depends of the organisation of the content & menu in the Joomla install. This is why I have decided to have a step-by-step approach to study different cases

STEP 1 - Blog pages approach.
STEP 2 - No Blog pages approach (Table+List).
STEP 3 - Mixed approach (Blog+Table+List)
STEP 4 & Above - Miscellaneous testings

Testing platform: Joomla 1.0.10.

See the results of STEP 1 testing -LAST MODIFIED 14/07/2006 9:52:

• http://www.55thinking.com/en/documents/STEP1.pdf (Detailed testing plan & results)
• http://www.55thinking.com/en/documents/STEP1.sql (SQL dump for testing purposes)

See the results of STEP 2 testing -:

• http://www.55thinking.com/en/documents/STEP2.pdf (Detailed testing plan & results)
• http://www.55thinking.com/en/documents/STEP2.sql (SQL dump for testing purposes)

STEP 3 Introduced further complexity in the pathway behaviour but no new behaviour for the menu coherence. Let us first focus on STEPS 1 & 2:

Now that we have a extremly stable joomla 1.0x platform, I think these itemid issues need to be corrected, or at least clear workarounds/hacks should be provided, on a case by case basis. IMO, the menu & pathway are 2 CORE elements in a CMS, and if activating the use of dynamic pages (be it blog or list or table at Section or Category level) create problems in the usability of the site (navigation incoherences), then again IMO it is a nº1 priority issue.

Any answer/help from the official dev team would be more than welcomed.

_________________
55 Thinking - Strategy Design Technology 
Good looking, Fast and Usable web solutions   
http://www.55thinking.com/

Rey is taking a well-diserved break.

I am sure he will reply to you ASAp. 

_________________
Jean-Marie Simonet / infograf · http://www.info-graf.fr · GMT +1
Multilanguage in 1.7: http://help.joomla.org/files/EN-GB_mult ... torial.pdf
---------------------------------
Joomla Translation Coordination Team • Joomla! Production Working Group

Thanks for doing the work to produce a documentation in english.

I encountered this behaviour first time when I wanted to have a proper pathway. Although database has all needed fields and structure to get things straight, there's no chance without re-coding Joomla.

Have a look at Joomap or Samsitemap:
They either show dupes or not all data. The very same applies to list of content of sections / categories. Application of multiple IDs to very same content in case of having a menu entry for an item makes situation really worse.

One of the reasons:
Every content item is of type blog. Like it is now you have no real chance to distinguish between content, blog, whatever.

Best and most trivial example to see it is when you have a menu at top and left or right with item 'Home'. One points to 'root_of_site' (without trailing slash which is bad as well), the other one has to point to item's id. Not doing it this way causes even more trouble. Two different links for one and the same item.

I explored Joomla in some deepth last time because I have to transfer a complex homepage (currently about 1.000 content items) to some CMS. Like it is now I can use almost everything but Joomla because customer wants to have things like a proper pathway (which is an absolute 'must be' IMNSHO). Deadline is coming soon ...

cu, diri

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Don't confuse me with facts. Read
http://www.heise.de/security/Massenhack ... from/rss09

I have spread my complaints about this huge misbehaviour across several threads. Hope the mods won't kick me out for insisting on this subject every now and then

As i have explained countless times before, in a really huge portal i am in charge of (a daily newspaper with more than 7000 articles), a strange malfunction is spoiling the pathway and causing other (still) minor annoyances. All linked titles or "read more" links append the excat same itemid (itemid=4, the lowest value in jos_menu).

You may have a look at

http://www.canarias24horas.com/index.ph ... Itemid=168

Notice the itemid in this url.

If you click on ANY piece of news, it will always default to itemid=4

Example:

http://www.canarias24horas.com/index.ph ... 9&Itemid=4

when it should be

http://www.canarias24horas.com/index.ph ... Itemid=168

Hope this can be solved for good.

Ljv.

lejovchina, that issue looks the same as this:

http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic ... #msg357858

which was apparently fixed in 1.0.10

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Do you want the answer to be as vague as your question?

It is my understanding that the ongoing Joomla ItemID issues will not be addressed/solved before Joomla 2.0 as this will require substantial structural changes.

To help manage these issues, OpenSEF allows you to disable the use of particular internal URLs.
This way you may select the "right" URL and path to be used.

For more info see:
What is Link Priority?
http://www.open-sef.org/component/optio ... pic,1902.0

_________________
██ AllMedia4Joomla Project
██ http://sourceforge.net/projects/allmedia4joomla/

Extract from another thread from dama:



This hack also solved all the problems mentionned in STEP 1 in my case.

This hack does not affect the behaviours mentionned in STEP 2, but does not solved them neither in my case.

I don't know whether itemids should or not be corrected in the core release 1.0.1x & forward, but if 1 line of code solves that very annoying issue, good bless dama & the Open source movement...

I also want a comprehensive NBS for 1.5x & 2,, but I also wish the 1.0.x release behaves 100% as a best of breed open source CMS solution. We are closer to that target now.

We need a little more help to solve STEP 2 issues...

_________________
55 Thinking - Strategy Design Technology 
Good looking, Fast and Usable web solutions   
http://www.55thinking.com/

I am actually running that site on 1.0.10 

Ljv.

My particular "persistent itemid" issue remains unsolved after applying the suggested hack.
It must be noted that almost all urls in that online newspaper are displayed as blog - content (multi)category, though this flaw seems to affect virtually any content article.

Cheers,

Ljv.

[!!No offence intended!!]

@lejovchina
Sad enough you don't have many chances to get your problem solved that fast because it all depands on doing what each CMS should do:
Offer the structure of content and no misterious collection of items.

As much as I want to help to improve Joomla to be a reliable CMS and as much as I appreciate the work done by core team and 3rd party developers - there is a very critical lack in most basic functionality. I really can not understand which brain had idea to cause such a chaos. IMNSHO it does not help to push more functions into v1.5 or later when the product is not able to fulfill one of most basic tasks of a CMS. Doing it in a way being understandable for users (and developers) would be an additional Plus.

Sorry, it might sound very offending but, everybody using Mambo or Joomla! has experience needed to compare competitors otherwise he isn't really able to run his site. A comment related to Joomla! being published in Germany (not from me!) is "from coders for coders". IMO this is an understatement as long as you are more than a "trivial" editor.

_________________
Don't confuse me with facts. Read
http://www.heise.de/security/Massenhack ... from/rss09

Amen.

It's a bit pointless to keep on arming our beloved CMS with the most fancy and cutting-edge features when arcane deffective code from Mambo 3.07 (!!!!) has not been enhanced/retouched/rewritten ever since.
"Jump ahead" policies won't make Joomla the stable enterprise solution it COULD already be.

This is not a minor issue, but a CORE flaw, and deserves more visibility, so that potencial users know exactly the extent of forthcoming troubles they might have to deal with.

In spite of my crticism on this matter, i still regard Joomla as, BY FAR, the most powerful, flexible, feature rich and user friendly CMS out there. The one i will remain commited to.

Ljv.

Q&T Note; marking topic UNDER REVIEW, might still be current for 1.0.11

_________________
Regards Robin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/robinmuilwijk - http://twitter.com/i_robin

Q&T Note; out of scope for the stability release 1.0.12. Will be moving this to Known issue forum.

_________________
Regards Robin

http://www.linkedin.com/in/robinmuilwijk - http://twitter.com/i_robin