The following video quickly presents the different features related to vanity URL management in Jahia.
What is a vanity URL?
Vanity URLs (also known as Friendly URLs) are additional, customizable and unique web addresses for pages and contents, which are useful for the website visitor to remember a specific page. It is also very important for search engines, as they are used to describe the content of the page. It also make things easier for your marketing campaigns! More details about Vanity URLs are available here.
Example
The url https://www.jahia.com/about-us/news-events/blog
can be converted into
https://www.jahia.com/blog
How can Jahia help me with vanity URLs?
By default, the URL of a page in Jahia is built by using the technical names of the pages, and by following the structure of the site. For instance, if you have a page “About” under the homepage of your site, you will access it with the following URL: http://domainname/home/about.html . The more levels you have in your site, the longer the URL will be. So if you have a page “History” under the About page, then its URL will be: http://domainname/home/about/history.html
In order to shorten such URL, make them more user friendly, and/or to work on the Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you can manually add custom URLs, vanity URLs, to your page. The only constraint is that the value chosen for theses URLs must be unique on your site. For instance, you can add the following vanity URLs for the “History” page:
/history
/company-roots
/how-it-started
The page will then be available using any of the following URLs:
http://domainname/home/about/history.html
http://domainname/history
http://domainname/company-roots
http://domainname/how-it-started
It is also possible to specify a default vanity URL, which will be used in the navigation menus, when creating links, etc.
In a multilingual site
Vanity URLs are also useful for sites available in several languages. Jahia prefixes the path of the page with the corresponding language: the French version of the blog page is available using the following URL:
https://www.jahia.com/fr/home/about-us/news--events/blog.html Using vanity URL allows to also translate the URL in the given language: https://www.jahia.com/fr/a-propos/news-evenements/blog
A vanity URL is specific to one and only one language. The unicity of the vanity URL on the site still applies, so you cannot use the same vanity URL for the same page in two different languages. In the previous example, https://www.jahia.com/fr/a-propos/news-evenements/blog, the “/fr/” is part of the Vanity URL, in order to explicitely inform that the page is in French.
Working with vanity URLs
Vanity URLs can be added on pages (which is the most frequent use case), but also on any content. It is especially useful for contents that can be displayed on their own page, for instance a news.
It is possible to manage vanity URLs from the following interfaces:
SEO tab of the Edit engine
Vanity URL setting panel
Please note that once a vanity URL has been set on a page in edition mode or using the Vanity URL panel, a publication of the page or the vanity URL itself, is required in order to activate it in the live version of your site.
Within the Edit Engine
A specific tab for vanity URLs (called SEO tab) is present when editing a page (or content) via the edit engine:
Note that you need the “View seo tab” permission to access this interface.
This interface allows simple operations on vanity URLs. It is too limited for more advanced scenarios, for instance if you want to move some vanity URLs from a page to another, or if you need to publish a vanity URL without publishing the page. For such operations, it is advised to use the Vanity URLs setting panel.
Adding vanity URLs
Simply click on the Add button then start typing the vanity URL, and click on “Save”:
The vanity URL needs to start with a slash (/) and can only contain letters, digits, dots (.), dashes (-) and no consecutive slashes.
The vanity is then added for the language selected in the edit engine.
Editing a vanity URL
You can edit an existing vanity URL by clicking on it.
Making your vanity URL active in the live version of your site
The vanity URL will be effective online once the page (or content) has been published. It is also possible to deactivate a vanity URL, by unselecting the “Active” checkbox. Once deactivated, the vanity URL will not be usable in the live version of your site.
Deleting a vanity URL
To delete a vanity URL, simply click on the ‘-’ button. You will also need to publish the page (or content) in order to stop using the vanity URL in the live version of your site.
Vanity URLs setting panel
Presentation
The Vanity URLs setting panel is accessible in the site settings section of the edit mode:
It lists all the pages and contents which have at least one vanity URL. By clicking on a page or content you will display all its vanity URLs (called “mappings”):
Default vs Live mappings
The “Default mappings” columns shows the vanity URLs as present in edition. The “Live mappings” column shows the vanity URL currently set on the page online.
Status color
If a vanity URL has a green status, it means that it is the same in both edit version and online. In other words, the vanity URL has been published and hasn’t been modified ever since.
The orange status signifies that either the vanity URL has never been published, or that it has been modified since the last publication.
Filter per language
The panel displays by default the vanity URLs in all the available languages of the site. It is possible to only display the vanity URLs of one or several languages, by selecting the desired languages in the language selector:
This selector lists the different languages activated on the site.
Filter by keyword
It is possible to filter the pages/contents by searching for part of one of their vanity URL. Then only the vanity URL corresponding to the search terms are displayed, but it is possible to show all the vanity URLs of the page/content by clicking on the Show all button.
Note: Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to search by using the page/content title.
Adding a new vanity URL
To add a new vanity URL to an existing page, you first need to expand the page and then click on the ‘+’ button. An interface is then displayed, allowing you to create new vanity URLs:
An error message is displayed when clicking on the save button in the following cases:
The vanity URL already exists on another page
The vanity URL contains non valid characters (only letters, digits, dots (.), dashes (-) and no consecutive slashes are allowed):
You can also make the vanity URLs automatically be available online by checking the option “Automatically publish on save”.
Editing a vanity URL
The vanity URL becomes editable when clicking on it. It is not possible to save the modification if the vanity URL is not valid (already in use or if it contains non valid characters):
Once edited, the previous value is still the one in use in live, so you will need to publish the vanity URL in order to activate the vanity URL in live.
Changing the language of a vanity URL
To change the language of a vanity URL, click on the current language and select the new one in the drop-down:
Activating or deactivating a vanity URL
Deactivating a vanity URL means that the vanity URL will not be usable online once it is published. In other words, the page will not be displayed if a visitor uses the vanity URL in his browser: a “404 Page not found error” page will be displayed instead.
To deactivate a vanity URL, simply use the toggle button. You will then need to publish the vanity URL to deactivate it in live as well:
A deactivated vanity URL appears in grey:
In this example “/how-it-started” is deactivated in both edit and live. “/history” has been deactivated in default, but it has not been published yet, so it is still activated in live.
Default vanity URL
The default vanity URL defines the vanity URL to use in the navigation menus, links, etc. Only one default vanity URL is possible per language and per page/content.
To make a vanity URL the default one, move your mouse over the vanity URL and click on the star:
A page can only have one default vanity URL per language. When defining a new vanity URL as the default one, then the property is automatically removed on the other vanity URL:
It is then advised to publish both vanity URLs at the same time.
Deleting a vanity URL
The deletion of a vanity URL is a two step process:
Deletion in “default” (i.e. in the work version). At this step, the vanity URL is still functioning in live
Deletion in live: the vanity URL does not work in live anymore
To delete a vanity URL, you just need to move your cursor on the vanity URL and then click on the delete button A confirmation window is then displayed.
Warning: This operation cannot be undone. Once this operation is performed, you cannot “undelete” the vanity URL.
If the vanity URL has never been published, then it does not appear any more in the dashboard.
If the vanity URL has been previously published, then it is still functioning in live until you delete the live version. Note that publishing the page from the edit mode, will also delete the vanity URL in live.
Warning: It is only possible to delete all the vanity URL for a page in live. Individual deletion in live is not supported.
Advice: If you want to move the vanity URL from one page to another, it is then advised to use the “move” feature, instead of deleting the vanity URL.
Moving a vanity URL
It is possible to move a vanity URL in the edit mode (i.e. in “default”) from a source page to a destination page. The vanity URL will point to the source page until the move of the vanity URL is published or until the publication of the destination page.
In order to move a vanity URL, just move your cursor on the vanity URL and then click on the move button . You will then be able to either select a page by browsing the site page tree, or you can directly enter the path of the destination page or content:
Publishing a vanity URL
A new vanity URL, or an existing one which has been modified or moved need to be published in order to be activated in live mode. To do so, just click on the publication button and confirm the publication.
Operations on multiple vanity URLs
It is possible to perform the same operations on several vanity URLs previously selected:
Delete
Move
Publish
It is possible to select vanity URLs from different pages, by selecting the checkbox next to a mapping. The top checkbox allows you to select or unselect all the vanity URLs of a page.
When one or several vanity URLs is/are selected, then the available operations are displayed at the top of the screen:
A confirmation window is then displayed.
. You will then be able to either select a page by browsing the site page tree, or you can directly enter the path of the destination page or content:
and confirm the publication.