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Page URL goes lowercase?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:46 am
by postiffm
I am trying to do a redirect from an old html page called /webPage.html to the new version of that page in CMSMS 1.11.11. I set up the internal page link and set all the settings. But when I put webPage.html in the Options | Page URL field and hit submit, cmsms automatically changes my capital 'P' to a lowercase 'p' and stores that as the URL.

But that is not the behavior I need. Now when the visitor goes to /webpage.html, the redirect works, but when they go to /webPage.html, it produces a 404 error.

Any solutions for this?

Re: Page URL goes lowercase?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 11:51 am
by Rolf

Re: Page URL goes lowercase?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 12:15 pm
by postiffm
Thanks Rolf. I was using the second method on the page you linked to. The behavior I experienced in CMSMS seems like a bug that should be fixed. But, I can use the htaccess method easy enough.

Re: Page URL goes lowercase?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 12:45 pm
by Jo Morg
postiffm wrote:The behavior I experienced in CMSMS seems like a bug that should be fixed.
IMnshO it's a bad practice to use mixed case URL's and converting them to lowercase seems to me more like duplicate content prevention, than anything else...

Re: Page URL goes lowercase?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 1:29 pm
by velden
Jo Morg wrote:
postiffm wrote:The behavior I experienced in CMSMS seems like a bug that should be fixed.
IMnshO it's a bad practice to use mixed case URL's and converting them to lowercase seems to me more like duplicate content prevention, than anything else...
I think it's not good practice indeed but we do have a use case here.

Not sure if it should be responsibility of cmsms but it would probably not be a lot of work to implement a solution that converts all 'input' aliases to lowercase before checking for existence.
Then, if it did, a lot of people would say cmsms fails SEO tests because it allows one page to be access through multiple urls (for those who care: read about canonical urls).

Alternatively have a look at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2923 ... write-rule
Don't know if it works, never used it myself.

Re: Page URL goes lowercase?

Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2014 3:44 pm
by postiffm
Thanks for the replies. My real-world problem was that I inherited a hacked-up website that had mixed-case URLs for many of the static .html files. I redesigned the site and put it into CMSMS, and my desire was to redirect all old links, like those remembered by google, to the new corresponding pages. A 301 is probably the best way to do this, but I used the internal redirect method because I saw it suggested as a way to do it, and I wanted to give it a try.

Anyway, I agree that mixed-case URLS are not the best. The solution proposed by velden seems too complicated. It seems easier to me to get rid of the strtolower() call (or whatever is used) on the Page URL field and let the website designer implement his own policy--if he wants mixed cased URLs, let him have them (as in my real-world example), and if he wants all lowercase, let him type it how he wants it. But don't silently change what the designer typed in the Page URL field! My 2cents.

Re: Page URL goes lowercase?

Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 6:14 am
by Jeff
ToolBox module http://dev.cmsmadesimple.org/projects/toolbox has a redirect pages feature, it might work for your purpose I don't know if it does the same lowercase conversion.

Jeff