New Plugin: Permalinks 1.00 Released (Feb 19)

Hey Dave.

I go to http://111.118.173.162/~hillston/blah.php and get the Permalinks Dispatcher at 111.118.173.162 Port 80 so I know it's working.

If I edit the "sections" section and add "permalink" field, then have "events" as the content in the Events page... the link now goes to http://111.118.173.162/events/ whereas I need it to go to http://111.118.173.162/~hillston/events/

This is a staging site before we change the DNS... so I can't really hard-code in "~hillston" unless it's a quick remove when it goes live.

Also, once I've added something in the permalink field, I can't delete it - I can only change it.

Hi Tim, 

The /~username/ in the url is typically used as a way to preview the website of a particular user on a shared server.  Having different web paths being staging and production servers is problematic for all kinds of reasons so if you can avoid it you should, but I'll assume that it's an end-client requirement for now and we'll try to find a workaround.

So if http://111.118.173.162/ is a shared server then I'm assuming you've got your .htaccess under /~hillston/, is that right?

And basically what we is add /~username/ to all the urls if we're on a URL that is using /~username/ already, but not save that data.  This way you'd be able to have the same files and content on both a staging/development server that users /~username/ previews and a live server that doesn't.

Can you email me CMS/FTP login details to dave@interactivetools.com?  I'll see if there's a way we can detect the /~username/ part of the url and update the plugin to support those preview urls.

Let me know, thanks.

>Also, once I've added something in the permalink field, I can't delete it - I can only change it.

Yea, once you go permalinks, you're permalinks for good.  Is there a scenario where you'd want to remove the permalink and have it revert back to the old style URL? 

Hey Dave,

Thanks for this - I'll send through the info.

The only reason I wanted to delete it was that it wasn't working... I guess once set up you wouldn't need to remove it - you're right:)

Tim: I've added /~username/ preview url support.  And it's portable so you can move to production servers without changing anything.  If anyone else has a server configured to use /~username/ urls and wants to try this let me know.

Djulia: Accented chars definately shouldn't be removed.  There's some debate online on this one.  Do you have a preference if we let accented latin characters thought or replace them with the closest matching non-accented latin character?  I'll do some more research to see what's possible and get you an update.  See the discussions here that reference google: https://www.google.com/search?q=seo+accented+characters

Thanks!

Hi Dave,

>Do you have a preference if we let accented latin characters thought or replace them with the closest matching non-accented latin character?

I think that it is necessary to be pragmatic as regards SEO. If your plugin can give the two possibilities, it is certainly the best approach! ;)

But more seriously, I prefer the replacement of the non-accented latin characters.

Thanks again!

Djulia

Hey Dave,

For idiots like me, you may wish to make a note in the readme to ensure that all links are set up with the proceeding "/".  ie.  href="/index.php"

Also, is there any way of applying changes to all pages within a section?  For instance, if I have a list section that already has 100 items in it, and then I add the permalink field and default it to products/, do I have to go to each item and edit it and save it to get that default setting applied to that page?

Also... withe the Permalinks DB, is there a way of generating that list and therefore creating a site map?