changing the '?id=' number in urls

hi modx people...

i’m wondering if i can change the assigned id number for urls for different folders and documents.

if i have a url which is, say, site.com/index.php?id=46, but i’d prefer it to be site.com/index.php?id=2, how do i change the numbers?

thanks.

You would need to manually change the ID number of the document in database table (site_content), but that can break something if you have other records linked to it (eg. permissions etc.) or references in snippetcalls/snippets.. you could backup the database first and then try to see what happens.

thanks.

would i be able to change the numbers in the database to names? i.e. from site.com/index.php?id=46 to site.com/index.php?id=contact or similar?

No, use the FURL feature in MODx to do that. Go to system configuration, friendly url settings and enable it and use the alias fields in documents to write the alias name, e.g. contact.

ah - the problem with that is that i’m not on a server which can handle friendly urls.

if i start changing numbers to letters in the database, will stuff still work (after tweaking stuff in the manager)?

If you manage to get something like index.php?id=contact to work, I think you will still have problems with search engine indexing. Plus you will have to redo all your modifications to the core each time you upgrade MODx. If you really want to have some user friendly links to pages you could always using a PHP file with a redirect. For example:

contact.php:



But it is much better to move to a server that supports friendly URLs.

Andy

First, FURLs uses ?q=alias and there is no issue with using that in SEO. And second, the mod_rewrite functionality is optional, so you can certainly use them without having mod_rewrite support.