Storing and resetting URLs

URLs are a listing and ranking criterion for search engines and their correct design is hence an important part of search engine optimization (SEO). Because later changes in URLs that have already been indexed by search engines may affect the search engine page ranking, and pages with changed URLs may hence be rendered inaccessible for a period of time, URLs should remain in existence for as long as possible even if the website structure or page name have changed.

FirstSpirit therefore offers the option of storing generated URLs. This means that the URLs created in a generation process will remain valid even if the values of relevance for the URL generation process (depending on the path generation method selected, for example changed display or reference names, relocated pages or media in a tree, changes in datasets) should change. These changes will only be reflected in the URL once the generated URLs have been manually reset. To store URLs, the “(SEO)” variant of the desired method must be selected in the generation settings.

If the “(SEO)” variants are selected, settings in the tab “URL settings” / “Short URLs” will also be taken into account in the generation process.

If changes in display names or the node structure are to be reflected in saved URLs, the menu option “Reset stored URLs” must be selected in the context menu under “Extras” at the node concerned in the SiteArchitect before the generation process. This is available for the following objects:

• Media
• Media Store folders
• Page references and
• Menu levels

If media, page references or menu levels have been moved around within the tree structure or renamed and these changes are to be reflected in the URL after a generation process has already taken place, these changes will therefore only become effective once the objects in question have been released and undergone the function “Reset stored URLs”. For changes in dataset contents to be reflected in the URL, the function needs to be applied to the page reference where the attendant content projection is provided. All content changes that have no impact on the URL will meanwhile of course be included in the next generation process following their release as usual.

The function also affects elements subordinated to the element in the tree structure where the function “Reset stored URLs” is invoked. This for example means that all the stored URLs of a tree section can be reset by invoking the function for the uppermost menu level, starting from which the URLs are to be reset. In this case the stored URLs of all the page references and menu levels subordinated to this menu level will be cleared.

This function is only available if the user at least has the “Change” permission for the “Global settings” / “URL settings” area.

If and which URLs are stored in a node can be viewed by selecting the context menu option “Extras” / “Display properties” or by pressing Alt + P at the respective node.