Suggestions on how to create duplicate url's for one article

[Medoomi]

Hi,

Would I have to create a re-direct page to maintain two separate url's for an article...

Or is there a way of creating an alias url that points to the same place?

I have SEF url's activated...

Thanks.

[PavlovaPete]

Hi Medoomi

>> two separate url's for an article

Why do you want to do this?

Using alias to do this is easy with a SEF extension like SH404 or the others.

Cheers

[Alextampa]

each menu link should have a different url

[Medoomi]

Great!

I've installed SH404, and it's up and running nicely. I wonder if Joomla will integrate this into the core sometime?

Thanks so much for pointing me there.

[Macsimice]

Joomla has it's own integrated SEF support which you can activate from the config panel. There are some that think they need a third party component like the one you're using, but the core solution also works great (for me anyway).

[Medoomi]

There are some that think they need a third party component like the one you're using, but the core solution also works great (for me anyway).

Hmmm yes, that's kind of what I thought too...

Till a client requested that they have not only www.website.com/articlename for the url of a single article, but something "simpler" like www.website.com/atn (as well).

If you know of a way of doing both with the core Joomla SEF features, please let me know.

[Macsimice]

There are some that think they need a third party component like the one you're using, but the core solution also works great (for me anyway).

Hmmm yes, that's kind of what I thought too...

Till a client requested that they have not only http://www.website.com/articlename for the url of a single article, but something "simpler" like http://www.website.com/atn (as well).

If you know of a way of doing both with the core Joomla SEF features, please let me know.

First of all, you really want to have 'just' one url linking to a one page (proper SEO practice).

In your case, the easiest way to do this is to apply the desired name ('atn') as the alias of your article url and/or the alias of your menu item, since these are the names that appear in your url.

If that's not enough, then I'll see you back here

[Medoomi]

I understand that keeping one url has certainly got to be the better practise, but clients will be clients, and rather than have a separate re-direct page, it makes a cleaner appearance to maintain two urls for one document.

So... if I set "atn" for the alias of the article, if I understand it correctly, the url is going to be www.mywebsite.com/atn (but nothing else).

How do I include the old url (given that people have been using it for months, are going to keep trying to use it & will get confused if it does not work)?

[Macsimice]

I understand that keeping one url has certainly got to be the better practise, but clients will be clients, and rather than have a separate re-direct page, it makes a cleaner appearance to maintain two urls for one document.

So... if I set "atn" for the alias of the article, if I understand it correctly, the url is going to be http://www.mywebsite.com/atn (but nothing else).

How do I include the old url (given that people have been using it for months, are going to keep trying to use it & will get confused if it does not work)?

I guess the easiest way would be to have two menu entries to the same document, one of which sits in your menu, and the other is perhaps in an unpublished, second menu.

Of course, if you have many of those this would not be maintainable.

Another solution (that I haven't tried but am thinking of for a problem of my own) is to try if you can use error.php to extract the path variable and see if you can put together the 'new' url with JRoute.

I'll try to explain:
Before, the view was called with index.php/item_alias/view_name/id/page_name.html
The new url is something like index.php/item_alias/id/page_name.html

When a visitor requests the page using the old url, I'll extract the id and the view to recreate the path with the new router.

Its theory, but I'm sure it'll work.

Is this what you're getting at?

[Hsekhar]

I have been looking for this too, Thanks for all the advice. Will try them and hopefully succeed in creating two URLs.

[Medoomi]

Is this what you're getting at?

Thanks for the menu suggestion. That's certainly an easy way of doing it for one or two such rogue articles.

As for using JRoute, it would be interesting if it worked, but it would need to be something fairly reliable.

My thinking is that if the Joomla core could be updated to handle these exceptions (like sh404, it would make life easier)...