Breadcrumb Accuracy and URL Consistency Needed ASAP

[Aiwa]

Yes, but the HOME in the NAVIGATION MENU can be gotten rid of... That's ACP > Settings > General Configuration > Website Name / Website Address. Or it's a custom tab added by IPC... Either way, it can be removed so you don't have TWO 'HOME' links that are different.

Maybe i'm missing something, but why would you want to move the root forum crumb when you're in forums? You can turn it off for all other apps so your other apps don't appear to crumb from forums...

I read his post as two different links to the forums or home... Well there's a FURL issue with the forum links, and he's got an extra 'HOME' link that doesn't have to be there...

[Marcher Technologies]

Yes, but the HOME in the NAVIGATION MENU can be gotten rid of... That's ACP > Settings > General Configuration > Website Name / Website Address. Or it's a custom tab added by IPC... Either way, it can be removed so you don't have TWO 'HOME' links that are different.

Maybe i'm missing something, but why would you want to move the root forum crumb when you're in forums? You can turn it off for all other apps so your other apps don't appear to crumb from forums...

I read his post as two different links to the forums or home... Well there's a FURL issue with the forum links, and he's got an extra 'HOME' link that doesn't have to be there...

You are... also I love when people misconfigure things... tested.... 8, you manually have created that breadcrumb, default does honor furlTemplates.

the crumb root at all times should be the default application, just as with that setting to remove forums off and default application of forums would produce.

re: the primary nav... yes, but it is extremely confusing to the user that when the root of thier site by a content page is /, that the Content 'pages' application tab uses {ipbroot}/page/defaultpagenamehere.

I still end up hiding that tab first thing.... yes, it 301's to the correct url... still beyond annoying.

[esquire]

You are... also I love when people misconfigure things... tested.... 8, you manually have created that breadcrumb, default does honor furlTemplates.

the crumb root at all times should be the default application, just as with that setting to remove forums off and default application of forums would produce.

re: the primary nav... yes, but it is extremely confusing to the user that when the root of thier site by a content page is /, that the Content 'pages' application tab uses {ipbroot}/page/defaultpagenamehere.

I still end up hiding that tab first thing.... yes, it 301's to the correct url... still beyond annoying.

(1) The problem also exists in the stock template. It is not a template error. No, I did not create that breadcrumb. That is what IPB provides in that breadcrumb automatically and I know because I didn't even install any breadcrumb fixes yet.

(2) There is a reason why I created a separate tab in the Menu for the forum and replaced the stock forum tab. It's because the default Forums tab points to mysite.com/index and that leads to the same 404 error and wrong url. I've activated the stock tab and you can see for yourself what happens. The tab entry I manually created is www. mysite.com / forum/ - that works.

And all of this futzing around is merely to get URLs that come with most open source and stock community software. That's all I'm trying to accomplish. Fix one thing and another issue pops up elsewhere. That's why it took a long time to set this up and no way it should be this difficult.

[Marcher Technologies]

(1) The problem also exists in the stock template. It is not a template error. No, I did not create that breadcrumb. That is what IPB provides in that breadcrumb automatically and I know because I didn't even install any breadcrumb fixes yet.

(2) There is a reason why I created a separate tab in the Menu for the forum and replaced the stock forum tab. It's because the default Forums tab points to mysite.com/index and that leads to the same 404 error and wrong url. I've activated the stock tab and you can see for yourself what happens. The tab entry I manually created is www. mysite.com / forum/ - that works.

And all of this futzing around is merely to get URLs that come with most open source and stock community software. That's all I'm trying to accomplish. Fix one thing and another issue pops up elsewhere. That's why it took a long time to set this up and no way it should be this difficult.

I would seriously suggest you check all your third-party applications furlTemplates file.... *some* application has the stock forums index definition in it, and it should not.

[esquire]

(1) I would seriously suggest you check all your third-party applications furlTemplates file.... *some* application has the stock forums index definition in it, and it should not.

Here's the list:

Your Links Directory

Ryan's Advanced Tags and Prefixes

I'm setting up another site this weekend. I can replicate the steps and the problem will always be the same. I'll look at my notes but fixing one issue causes another problem. This is what I've noticed happening when you install IPS in the root and make CCS the default app. Yes, you can have the forum appear as if it is in another directory e.g. /talk/ or /whatever/ but then you have the "index" in the furlTemplate creating a URL problem that I've tried to fix. Changing it in the furlTemplate solves that problem but then there is still a breadcrumbs problem that is created. Many times I noticed that there are different URLs that will lead to the same page. The only fix was using Crumbies to solve it.

Note that you will have "home" as a link in some apps but not others. That's just the way the software works. Can't change it except by using Crumbies to combat that inconsistency as you move from app to app.

[Marcher Technologies]

Here's the list:

Your Links Directory

Ryan's Advanced Tags and Prefixes

not just installed, anything onserver in {ipbroot}/{admin_dir}/applications_addon/other/ (it SHOULD run only installed apps into the cache, but unwilling to assume)

and i meant the actual furlTemplates.php file for the apps, I know I have no such conflicting definition in any version of links, cannot speak for others.

I cannot reproduce that changing furl definitions and recaching furl with stock IPB+apps, therefore...

[esquire]

I'll reproduce it when I have time this weekend. I'll give you the steps I've followed in order to arrive there. This site is rather simple and the real problems are the result of (a) the inability to just stack each app neatly into a container in the URL, and (b) the inability to get consistent breadcrumbs across apps. The site is being designed with seniors in mind. They need deadly simple for many things. Having breadcrumbs jump from app to app is about as frustrating as it gets.

Here is perhaps the most damning flaw I find with the URL system - ww w.yoursite.com/_/ has no page assigned to it. It is a 404 error. So reassign the slug to "articles" or "mag" and to go w ww.yoursite.com/articles/ and you will get... a 404 error. As I've found out, the only way to get any of this to work the way I thought it would work is to have some type of portal on the home page. I'm not sure this solves the /articles/ problem. Maybe after working with IPC I configured things incorrectly and this is occurring. I can only hope this is the case. But I have never been able to solve this problem and I think it's an SEO killer for content, IMHO.

w ww.yoursite.com / = home page with CCS as the default app

w ww.yoursite.com/articles/ = dead 404 page

w ww.yoursite.com/articles/whatever-r1 = an article

[Aiwa]

Designed with seniors in mind...

I don't know about you, but most seniors I know use google and click around... They don't futz around with the URL... They don't have the sense enough to know that they can manipulate it like that...

That's just my experience, though...

So that forums nav tab is custom? Try rebuilding your FURL cache... If that forums tab is custom and you've hidden the real one then your FURL cache hasn't updated properly..

[esquire]

Designed with seniors in mind...

I don't know about you, but most seniors I know use google and click around... They don't futz around with the URL... They don't have the sense enough to know that they can manipulate it like that...

That's just my experience, though...

So that forums nav tab is custom? Try rebuilding your FURL cache... If that forums tab is custom and you've hidden the real one then your FURL cache hasn't updated properly..

I tried rebuilding the FURL cache. That's not the problem. The stock tab for forums becomes ww w.mysite.com/index and that's also what is substituted for the breadcrumb. I just put back the stock furlTemplates.php and it does the same thing. You can look now. The nav tab always produces that URL for the default application. It's what happens when I get rid of index.php from the root when I suppress it from being generated in the setting that is hidden in "Step 1" in the index.html that is in the IP.Content ACP area. It's either IPC or IPB that gets that index URL and if I use IPC as the main application, IPB gets that appended.

Regarding the URLs, it may not be a problem for seniors but even my father will type in mysite.com/mag/ in a different computer because he remembers it. He'll have no clue what the rest of the URL is. Having the slug for IPC as a 404 error is a big flaw. In fact, I forgot to 301 redirect it on my other site. I will say that if I don't install IPC and just use IPB on sites, performance seems much better from an SEO perspective. But anyways, this is not the point for the above. I do appreciate trying to trouble shoot but it shouldn't be this hard.

[Aiwa]

If IPB is the default app, the forums nav tab points to /

If something else is the default app, the forums nav tab points to /index (or /forums if that's what you customized the furlTempaltes for the 'forums' app to be.) /index for forums is ONLY linked when it's not the default app. (at least that's my understanding) /index will always 'work', it's just not in a generated FURL as it doesn't need to be if forums is default... just go to /...

IPC 'articles' tab (is usually named pages) always points to your default page... I don't use it personally, I just remove that tab entirely and either use the website name / address tab or throw in my own that points to / where IPC's default page is executed.

Whatever your forums nav tab does, the same happens to the first breadcrumb, unless you use settings to remove it when not in the forums app.

In the meantime you can always 301 the slug to your page of choice via .htaccess... Not pretty, i agree, but gives you the functionality you want NOW.

[esquire]

If IPB is the default app, the forums nav tab points to /

If something else is the default app, the forums nav tab points to /index (or /forums if that's what you customized the furlTempaltes for the 'forums' app to be.) /index for forums is ONLY linked when it's not the default app. (at least that's my understanding) /index will always 'work', it's just not in a generated FURL as it doesn't need to be if forums is default... just go to /...

IPC 'articles' tab (is usually named pages) always points to your default page... I don't use it personally, I just remove that tab entirely and either use the website name / address tab or throw in my own that points to / where IPC's default page is executed.

Whatever your forums nav tab does, the same happens to the first breadcrumb, unless you use settings to remove it when not in the forums app.

In the meantime you can always 301 the slug to your page of choice via .htaccess... Not pretty, i agree, but gives you the functionality you want NOW.

Hence - this is NOT a setup error. This is exactly the problem. Having to 301 redirect every generated link to your forum home page is a nasty solution.

Breadcrumbs: This only gets worse since you can't put the home page into the breadcrumbs without having other items break. Thus, after a week of messing around, the only solution was to use Marcher's Crumbies to generate breadcrumbs for every app - it's a time consuming task on a larger site but it works. I can get the same setup from Wordpress in under 60 seconds, as with most content management systems. Hence setting up every new IP.S site is a very time consuming task process.

URLS: You raise an amusing repeat scenario of people wondering what pages vs articles are. And then you have to do the nasty 301 redirect from the articles own root/home page at mysite.com/articles/ aka mysite.com/_/ ! This is also a problem because you want your website home page to be different than your articles/mag home page. Wordpress and Joomla do this right out of the box. The problem with IPC is that you cannot assign a page to be at the root articles page, mysite.com/articles/ . The only way to do this is to 301 redirect your articles home page to some other URL so the cure is as bad as the disease. And you have users wondering what they did wrong by going to what they thought was the articles home page like they've seen on over 4 billion wordpress sites and virtually every site I've seen.

Let's say you want to put IPC in the /articles/ directory right off of your home page. So let's put a portal page as your home page and then install IPC in a subdirectory called /articles/. Well, that idea is hosed again because rather than specify the identifier for each database in a config file, there is only one identifier for the entire IPC module. Hence, the best you can get is a two tiered solution to your articles home page. mysite.com/slug/articles/ . The kicker is that even if you're clever and try to use mysite.com/car/articles/ you're still in pain because mysite.com/car/ must be 301 redirected to mysite.com/car/articles/ and looks completely ridiculous. I hate to think what search engines think of this when crawling. And you'll have users experimenting with what happens when you go to mysite.com/cars/ and wondering why it's going somewhere else. (And if anyone tells me that nobody looks at urls, I cannot count the times I have typed in news.com/sports/ or the like to get to the section of a site I'm expecting.)

I invested a great deal of time taking apart IP.S. I love it and it has a ton of potential. But I don't think that what I've just described is as trivial as some feel it may be. I've been here for a while and made a significant investment to be here. My feeling is that finding a way or at least mapping out something towards a solution is very important and shouldn't wait too much longer. Thank you for going through this with me and trying to help, as always.

[Marcher Technologies]

off-topic as unbelievable.... but adding a site root crumb should not take more than 5 seconds with said mod... just use a 'sticky' crumb.

[esquire]

off-topic as unbelievable.... but adding a site root crumb should not take more than 5 seconds with said mod... just use a 'sticky' crumb.

LOL. There was some issue I cannot recall and it may have had to do with the need to recreate breadcrumbs in certain apps and not others (forum specifically). I'll try it now with the new version of Crumbies (just purchased it for this site) but it appears that MT34 isn't there right now. I'll report back and edit this just for those watching when I can work with it. This is essential if you want proper breadcrumbs.

[esquire]

off-topic as unbelievable.... but adding a site root crumb should not take more than 5 seconds with said mod... just use a 'sticky' crumb.

I think I remember now. Breadcrumbs aren't supposed to appear on the home page. If I recall correctly I had to remove all breadcrumbs from all pages to remedy that problem and then start from scratch defining breadcrumbs in every app individually.

[ZeusFaber]

I try here given the support reply to me with evasive replies...

I have a fresh default installation of forum + content. The whole package was installed in public_html/forum

http://www.aidmen.it/index.html

As many, I need having the Content as my default app. This feature is stated everywhere.

After various configurations I would have:

www.aidmen.it/index.html my root hence the Content

www.aidmen.it/forum the forum.

Now, trough the customer support I discover that:

The logo always point to the forum!

Of course I want that the main logo points to my site root instead of pointing to /forum. unfortunately the logo link is hardcoded, Changing the URL for the logo would require a template edit as by default it will always point to the forum. I will need to change it in the "defaultHeader" template.

The root breadcrumb URL always point to the forum!

Again, I have www.aidmen.it with my articles, so the base breadcrumb must not point to the forum.

The URL is also hard-coded in the templates unfortunately. I have to edit the "globalTemplate" in my skin.

Tech support just told me to modify the section:

<!-- ::: NAVIGATION BREADCRUMBS ::: -->

Why I have to tweak the code to have a base feature? I mean this is just a normal integration of forum and content.

I chose this product because I did not want to mess integrating Joomla with another forum product and now I discover that I must be a programmer to getting the suite working together as default?

What I have to modify here?

And where I get the proper documentation/learnign to do it?

I'm shocked! because I'm not asking to obtain a special feature or obscure tweak but just a plain working IPS suite installation with IP.Content as default application.

Moreover, if I will install a new skin or even I will upgrade my suite I will have to do it again?

<!-- ::: NAVIGATION BREADCRUMBS ::: -->
<if test="countnav:|:count( $items['navigation'] )">
<div id='secondary_navigation' class='clearfix'>
<ol class='breadcrumb top ipsList_inline left'>
<php>$this->did_first = 0;</php>
<if test="switchnavigation:|:!$this->settings['remove_forums_nav'] OR ipsRegistry::$current_application == 'forums'">
<li itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
<a href='{parse url="act=idx" seotitle="false" base="public"}' itemprop="url">
<span itemprop="title">{$this->settings['board_name']}</span>
</a>
</li>
<if test="didfirstnav:|:$this->did_first=1"></if>
</if>
<foreach loop="navigation:$items['navigation'] as $idx => $data">
<li itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
<if test="didfirstappnow:|:$this->did_first"><span class='nav_sep'>{parse replacement="f_nav_sep"}</span></if>
<if test="navigationlink:|:$data[1]"><a href='{parse url="{$data[1]}" base="$data[4]" seotitle="$data[2]" template="$data[3]"}' title='{$this->lang->words['nav_return_to']} {parse expression="IPSText::striptags( IPSText::htmlspecialchars( $data[0] ) )"}' itemprop="url"></if><span itemprop="title">{$data[0]}</span><if test="closenavigationlink:|:$data[1]"></a></if>
</li>
<if test="forsuredidfirstnav:|:$this->did_first=1"></if>
</foreach>
</ol>
</div>
<br />
</if>

[Aiwa]

1) IP.Content may be your default app, but your IP.Board installation is in /forum. Thats your base_url. If you install everything in / then the logo will point to your default IPC page.

2) you can turn off that first breadcrumb with a setting when you aren't in the forums app. Do a quick search if the ACP for breadcrumb

[ZeusFaber]

Thanks for your reply.

If I install everything in / are there some other wrong side effects to consider?

I guess I have to update my license URL too.

I'm still in an early phase so a new installation is not a problem.

Thank you in advance.

[Aiwa]

I have my entire suite installed at / with no problem. I also have IPC as the default app. There are some SEO pundits that would say not having /forum in the URL everywhere is bad, but I don't have any problems...

You don't have to have a new installation. You can move your existing install and change a few settings.

[ZeusFaber]

I have my entire suite installed at / with no problem. I also have IPC as the default app. There are some SEO pundits that would say not having /forum in the URL everywhere is bad, but I don't have any problems...

You don't have to have a new installation. You can move your existing install and change a few settings.

You mean that I move directly all the /forum contents to / ???? (I'm a noob if it's not clear ;) )

[Aiwa]

Yes. Move all files and folders in /forum to /

Edit conf_global.php and change your 'board_url'

Log into your ACP /admin

Update..... System Settings > General Configuration > Upload URL & Upload Path. If you have Downloads / Gallery there will be similar settings for them in their app specific settings...

ACP > Cache Management > Recache All

ACP > Look and Feel > Template Tools > Recache skinsets.

Done.

[ZeusFaber]

Tried.... completely screwed up :cry:

[GreenLinks]

Tried.... completely screwed up :cry:

If you ned need further assistance , i highly suggest to share what you did , so every one can assist you . Without that , there is no one that can assist as none of us know what you applied

[ZeusFaber]

Guys,I really appreciated your support.

IPS support said that "it's out of ticket scope" just because I want a consistent content/board installation.

If I knew all the pita just for a default installation with content as home page I would not never bought this product . But now it's too late.

I started with this thread, doing this:

http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/382659-nav-bar-not-working/#entry2386576

I had a lot of problems so I opened a ticket. IPS support told me that the problem lies in two parts:

• I used the index.php shipped under tools folder of IP.Content so I must not use the constant.php file.
• I need two .htaccess files: once created from ACP > Other apps > IP.Content > settings > advanced (copied in root folder) and another one obtained from ACP > System settings > SEO (copied in /forum folder)

With these settings eveything was working again but as I wrote in this thread few posts above:

• The logo URL needs a manual mod to point correctly to my site homepage
• The base breadcumb URL still points to /forum. Again I need a code edit in globaltemplate. Customer support says that this is out of their scope. Of course there's no docs. Good to know how it works a paid product. They said me just ask on the forum.

So this is my starting situation.

Aiwa suggested me to move everything in the public_html root folder with small tweaks. I made those tweaks but Inearly everything screwep up.

Now I was able to get it working again but my ACP lacks of some functionalities.

This is what I made to make it working again:

• Copied everything from /forum to /
• Applied AIWA suggestions:

• Created a constants.php with ccs as default app

• removed ipcontent index.php file and substituted with the small index.php that originally was on /forum folder

• removed the seo settings htaccess file (originally under /forum) and used the ip.content htaccess file.

• I blanked the System Settings > IPS Apps > IP.Content Advanced Settings "URL to index.php"

Now the default website seems to work:

www.aidmen.it

But since I moved everything to root I have a not fully working ACP.

I immediately realized that the menu "Other apps" is empty. I can click on it but instead of getting a menu I get the simple table with apps installed. All the tabs are disabled.

Search box on ACP doesn't work anymore

On System Settings > IPS Apps > IP.Content Advanced Settings no htaccess is generated when I enable mod_rewrite.

So it seems that something went wrong. Maybe it's better scratching everything and start over again :cry:

Last but not the least. Should I request a new license key for my installation? The license says "www.mydomain.com/forum" Now everything is installed in www.mydomain.com.

BTW it seems that I cannot change key in the ACP but only remove the current license key (never tried before so i don't know if is another thing that got screwed up).

I really I do not get why there's no a "content as homepage" official installation guide in the official docs but everything is left to some good posts in the forums (some of them are not consistent).

Actually this process should be included in the automatic installation process.

[Aiwa]

https://www.invisionpower.com/support/guides/_/ips-community-suite-apps/ip-cont/make-ipcontent-your-homepage-r273

There is.

I don't know what happened to your ACP. did you by chance rename your admin directory?

Run the DB checker and DB index checker and permissions checker. Also make sure you recache everything.

[ZeusFaber]

https://www.invisionpower.com/support/guides/_/ips-community-suite-apps/ip-cont/make-ipcontent-your-homepage-r273

There is.

I don't know what happened to your ACP. did you by chance rename your admin directory?

Yes, I scratched everything and I installed everything again.

Now it seems to work.

BTW I did not change anything on admin.

After installation I was trying to setup FURLS and other things and again other problems now solved.

Thank you guys

Bye