I could only manage this with URLREWRITING. The problem is that we have tons of such links and we have to do umbraco database lookup to find the "thebookname/chapternumber" foldernames and then apply the URL scheme.
This way we get 200 OK and is not any redirect.
Is there a way in Umbraco where we can define such things easily.
Take a look at the "magic" property umbracoUrlAlias for a way to accomplish this.
Define that on your DocumentType and fill in the desired shortcut on the individual nodes, e.g.: thefilename in your example above - and Umbraco will serve that node's content on that URL.
To prevent searchbots (i.e. Google :-) from flagging those as duplicate content, you can put a rel="canonical" (check Google for exact syntax) on the page, where you use the URL you get from NiceUrl() to tell the bot what the real URL is...
Wow, that's great! It's working wonderfully. Two question related to this:
One concern: www.site.com/filename and www.site.com/filename.aspx both works. Can't we somehow make only .aspx work. In the config files use directory mode is set to false already.
This way we get 3 duplicate URLs. What do you suggest for this? I was thinking to write URL rewriting to 301 redirect original url to this urlaliasurl.
One problem I have is that we will have such thousands of URLs. Now, if we change the name of one URL, the old one will direct to 404. So, for this, I have to again create the code for the save event to record urlalias changes and store them in the 301 redirection bank.
If you can, I'd recommend you enable the "directory" URLs - the .aspx suffix is just annoying to use when giving somebody a URL - it's much better to just say: "Go to mysite dot com slash goodies" and not have to say "dot aspx" too.
If you want to keep it like you do now (with the .aspx) it would probably be a good idea to add a URL rewrite for URLs without .aspx and route them to the .aspx version (one single generic rewrite). That way you could still use the .aspx-less version when handing out URLs — all internal URLs handled by Umbraco will be correct anyway, so no need to worry about those.
Regarding the duplicate URLs - that's why I mentioned creating a "CanonicalURL" macro to put in the <head> section of your Master. If you use that, you shouldn't be getting duplicate content on Google because it makes sure to always index the page on a single URL.
The problem with renaming pages — maybe take a look at 301 Moved Permanently - a package that works much like the umbracoUrlAlias, you create a special property and when you rename a page, you put the old name in that property, so Umbraco can find the page anyway and serve the 301 header.
Shortening the URLs
Dur to our content structure, our urls are like this:
http://www.website.com/en/foldername/the-books/thebookname/chapternumber/thefilename.aspx
We want that this url should work like this:
http://www.website.com/thefilename.aspx
I could only manage this with URLREWRITING. The problem is that we have tons of such links and we have to do umbraco database lookup to find the "thebookname/chapternumber" foldernames and then apply the URL scheme.
This way we get 200 OK and is not any redirect.
Is there a way in Umbraco where we can define such things easily.
Thanks.
Hi Angelo,
Take a look at the "magic" property umbracoUrlAlias for a way to accomplish this.
Define that on your DocumentType and fill in the desired shortcut on the individual nodes, e.g.: thefilename in your example above - and Umbraco will serve that node's content on that URL.
To prevent searchbots (i.e. Google :-) from flagging those as duplicate content, you can put a rel="canonical" (check Google for exact syntax) on the page, where you use the URL you get from NiceUrl() to tell the bot what the real URL is...
/Chriztian
Hi Chriztian,
Wow, that's great! It's working wonderfully. Two question related to this:
One concern: www.site.com/filename and www.site.com/filename.aspx both works. Can't we somehow make only .aspx work. In the config files use directory mode is set to false already.
This way we get 3 duplicate URLs. What do you suggest for this? I was thinking to write URL rewriting to 301 redirect original url to this urlaliasurl.
One problem I have is that we will have such thousands of URLs. Now, if we change the name of one URL, the old one will direct to 404. So, for this, I have to again create the code for the save event to record urlalias changes and store them in the 301 redirection bank.
I found this tool: http://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/301-url-tracker which looked great but it only works automatically for umbracoUrlName variable.
Can this or something else work for "umbracoUrlAlias" also?
Thanks a lot for your help.
Hi Angelo,
If you can, I'd recommend you enable the "directory" URLs - the .aspx suffix is just annoying to use when giving somebody a URL - it's much better to just say: "Go to mysite dot com slash goodies" and not have to say "dot aspx" too.
If you want to keep it like you do now (with the .aspx) it would probably be a good idea to add a URL rewrite for URLs without .aspx and route them to the .aspx version (one single generic rewrite). That way you could still use the .aspx-less version when handing out URLs — all internal URLs handled by Umbraco will be correct anyway, so no need to worry about those.
Regarding the duplicate URLs - that's why I mentioned creating a "CanonicalURL" macro to put in the <head> section of your Master. If you use that, you shouldn't be getting duplicate content on Google because it makes sure to always index the page on a single URL.
The problem with renaming pages — maybe take a look at 301 Moved Permanently - a package that works much like the umbracoUrlAlias, you create a special property and when you rename a page, you put the old name in that property, so Umbraco can find the page anyway and serve the 301 header.
/Chriztian
Thank you so much for your reply. All clear :) Great tips!
Love,
Angelo
is working on a reply...
This forum is in read-only mode while we transition to the new forum.
You can continue this topic on the new forum by tapping the "Continue discussion" link below.