Cross-linked blog categories

[erichf]

I've created a category structure that looks something like this
main1
main2
projects
-project1
--general
--status
--releases
---rel1
---rel2
---rel3
--docs
--call log
-project2
--general
--status
--releases
---rel1
---rel2
--docs
--call log
-project3
--general
--status
--releases
---rel1
---rel2
---rel3
--docs
--call log

The main menu is main1, main2, projects where projects displays a category list showing only one level of categories.

When I navigate through project 1, everything works fine. When I navigate through project2, it navigates properly until I attempt to select rel1. At that point, it displays rel1 from project1 rather than project2. The URL shows project2 but the breadcrumbs show project1. The same thing happens when I select any category at that level.

I'm looking at the Category table in the database but I don't see anything wrong there.
I've tried rebuilding the category list using the Rebuild button in the category manager.
When I unpublish the project categories, the other category rel1 link back to a single articlein the project1 category.

Any ideas?

[erichf]

The problem turned out to be caused by the aliases that were being created automatically for some categories.

Some of the category names were software version numbers such as 3.2.6.5. When Joomla automatically created the alias for this category, it changed it to 3-2-6-5 which is apparently not allowed. Normally it generates a 404 when the alias is a string of numbers but in my case it seemed to think that another article was the right destination.

The solution was to change all of the category aliases to have a "v" at the start and the categories now work fine.