Friendly URLs

URLs that are optimized for search engines also make it easier for website visitors to navigate to and throughout your website. Friendly URLs preclude the need for visitors to have to write down or memorize hard to remember addresses. Furthermore, an optimized URL better represents the contents of a page and its location on the website which means that visitors can more quickly find the page(s) they are looking for. Because optimized URLs benefit both search engines and visitors, they are referred to as "friendly" URLs.

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Friendly URLs in XperienCentral

When XperienCentral's SEO component is installed, theoretically all URLs for your website are friendly. The friendly URL for pages is constructed using the page's location in the navigation tree together with the URL title, navigation title, or page title (depending on how SEO is configured). For example, if a page has the title 'XperienCentral', then the URL of the page will be .../XperienCentral.htm (or .html). With SEO disabled, the URL of a page is not created using the pages's friendly URL title, instead an internal ID as assigned to pages within XperienCentral is used, for example .../id=77581/langid=42. For search engines and users, the unfriendly URL provides no useful meaning regarding the contents of the page and/or its location in the website's navigation hierarchy.

How Friendly URLs are Constructed

The friendly URL of an item in XperienCentral includes the relative path to the item based on the structure of the navigation tree, the title of the item and an extension, in much the same way that a path for a file is delineated in a file system. The precise URL that an item will be assigned is derived using a set of rules that evaluate the item's title(s) as well as its location in the website's navigation hierarchy. In XperienCentral, you can assign the following three titles to pages/content items:

When determining which of the three titles to use in the friendly URL, the following title sequence is stepped through by XperienCentral:

1. URL title. If there is a URL title assigned to a page or item, it takes precedence and is always used in the friendly URL. To the URL title, the path and friendly URL extension, prefix, and separator will be added.
2. Navigation title (pages only). If a page has no URL title assigned to it, the navigation title is used in the friendly URL. To the navigation title, the path and the friendly URL extension, prefix and separator will be added.
3. Item title. If the page/content item has no URL title or navigation title assigned to it, the title of the item itself is used in the friendly URL. To the title, the path and the friendly URL extension, prefix and separator will be added. Note: If a page has no navigation title, the title of the page is also used as the navigation title in the navigation tree of the website.

The table below shows what the URL for items in a tree structure would be for some sample pages. The values in the following examples assume the following:

• The URL's extension is set to .htm.
• The separator symbol, which is substituted for spaces that appear in titles, is a dash (-). The separator symbol is defined in the XperienCentral Setup Tool. The default is a dash (-).

For Content Repository items, the situation is a bit different. Because Content Repository items do not have navigation titles, only the URL title or the title of the item itself is used in the friendly URL. If a content item has a URL title, it is used in the friendly URL, otherwise the title of the content item itself is used. The exact friendly URL that a content item will have when it is viewed depends on the page on which it is displayed.

For example, if a content item has the title "GX releases XperienCentral 10", the friendly URL of the content item is 'GX-releases-XperienCentral-10.htm'. There is no hierarchical structure prefixed internally to the friendly URL of the content item because it is stored in the Content Repository. When the content item is displayed on a page, the hierarchical structure of the 'display on' page is prefixed to the content item's friendly URL with the result being the friendly URL for the page and the content item. Based on the example friendly URLs shown in the table above, the friendly URLs for the following sample content items would be:

Google News ID for Articles

If the Google News id has been enabled in XperienCentral, the friendly URL of content items is generated in a slightly different manner. A unique id (number) is prefixed to the part of the friendly URL just before the title of the article, for example,.../02041/GX-releases-XperienCentral-version-10,htm. This is done in order to satisfy a requirement of the Google News article aggregation service.

Uppercase and Lowercase Letters in Friendly URLs

XperienCentral does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters when resolving URLs. That is, the URLs http://www.gxsoftware.com/Welcome.htm and http://www.gxsoftware.com/welcome.htm resolve to the same address. While friendly URLs in XperienCentral can be a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters as displayed in the address bar of a browser, all versions of an address using a mixture of cases are the same.

Second Friendly URL

In addition to the friendly URL, a content item can also be navigated to from a second friendly URL that omits the friendly URL separator. For example, if the friendly URL separator is a dash (-) and the friendly URL for a page is

gx-products.htm

then the above page is also available at the friendly URL

gxproducts.htm

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