Friendly URLs and Alias Paths

Is there anyone out there with experience in creating cross platform SEF URLs, including alias paths? The current solution in MODx is not exactly optimal and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The ideal solution would be to be able to use the same alias in different folders and have everything work out just fine, so that a URL might look like:

mysite.com/press/releases/new.html
and
mysite.com/articles/new.html

Thanks!

I know this is not exactly what you are looking for. My mod will work properly on all platforms as long as they have access to mod rewrite. However after extensive research I no longer support directory structures as you are asking for.

I use links like this

http://www.webmedic.net/released-phpbb-google-keyword-urls-221-seo-mod-vt25564.html

the reason for this can be seen here:

http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20041209ShouldYouUseTargetedKeywordsinURLs.html
and this
http://www.prweaver.com/blog/2004/08/26/2-hyphen-and-underscore

Now i can also say after implementing the seo tools i have on my site and working on them for over a yars now. I see almost instant changes in google when I change the keywords for instance in the title of my site. It allows me to get top ranking hits easily and quickly among many search engines. as can be seen here:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=google+keyword+urls

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=google+keyword+urls&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-pull-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MSNH&srch_type=0&q=google+keyword+urls

http://search.go.com/search/searchResults?&search=google+keyword+urls&adultFilter=clean&searchType=1&trackingType=go_search_topbox

http://search.lycos.com/default.asp?loc=searchbox&tab=web&query=google+keyword+urls&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

http://www.wisenut.com/search/query.dll?q=google+keyword+urls&p=0

http://search.looksmart.com/p/search?qt=google+keyword+urls&tb=web&search=Search

http://web.ask.com/web?q=google+keyword+urls&qsrc=0&o=0


I have a whole toolkit for doing seo on my site. For now it is working on phpbb but as I get the time I am porting it to other apps as well. After reviewing many such apps I have run across this one and after I get a chance to look at the code will port my work over to this app.

Now I dont know if this is exactly what you are looking for but at least it is what i have to offer. I also know that it will most likely never be in the core product but I’m still willing to offer support for it.

I hope this helps thanks.

Quote from: webmedic at Jul 08, 2005, 03:44 PM

I know this is not exactly what you are looking for. My mod will work properly on all platforms as long as they have access to mod rewrite. However after extensive research I no longer support directory structures as you are asking for.

webmedic, excellent research on the SEO stuff. I tend to avoid nested directory URL’s as well, especially since I can’t get it to work properly in the current version of MODx ;-), but rest assured, this is currently how MODx works in regards to SEF URL’s. You can provide an alias for any page or link in the site, which becomes the URL.

What we are looking to allow is nested aliases, so that in some site structures, you can use the same alias for different pages located in different directories (e.g. /index.html and /products/index.html, or /hosting/shared/packages.html and /hosting/dedicated/pacakages.html). This is related to the Use Friendly Alias Paths option under System Configuration -> Friendly URL Settings and would only work when this option is selected. Otherwise, all aliases are assumed to be from the root of the site and must be unique for each page in the site.

This feature does work somewhat, but it requires all paths to be referenced using an absolute path to the root of the webserver, making it difficult to create portable sites in many cases.

well i should think in all cases. Why not just use an alias for the path and then parse the script path on every execution. or better yet make it one of the settings in admin. That way it would be easy to port it for any site. Although myself I think I’ll stick to using

http://www.examplesite.com/products-index.html

Also am I to understand you correctly that this app already does url’s as I stated above completely the same or is it different. If it is different then I would still do the work to port my system over since it has a proven track record and I know form experience that it works. Including my site and others that have downloaded it I would say that there is at a minimum 1000 users out there and it seems to be working well for each one. Rarely do I get complaints and when i do it’s usually because they have done something to mess it up.

I would also note that I’m planning a rewrite soon that would of course only work under phpbb but the type of urls and things I’m doing to achieve this would be easy to port to any other app.

sorry and I forgot this is not just one thing I have many other parts to it listed here:
http://www.webmedic.net/seo-toolkit-for-phpbb-vf47.html

Hi Brook (webmedic)!

Glad to see you here. Currently in MODx when you turn on Friendly URLs and Friendly aliases, it uses the page alias field as the URL, so it can be anything you want. In the upcoming TP3, aliases are automatically created from the page title, but you can change them to whatever you want.

But as Jason alluded, they’re not totally working in a bullet-proof manner in all instances (alias paths). That’s something that I’d really like to see worked out for simplicity’s sake of easy URL creation. We’d absolutely love to have you working on any part of this. Thansk for chiming in!

I know this discussion is a little old, but where are we on this ?

I’d like to be able to have the document hierarchy reflected in urls Maybe this has been already done and it’s somewhere else in the forums, but didn’t find it (yet)...

Edit : Okay, dumb me !!!
I found the Use friendly alias path setting in the admin panel...