Path Finder module - another solution for path/alias management

Hi alayham,

That's an application that hadn't occurred to me.

To do what you're suggesting (keep the short version in the browser address bar) then redirection to the "long" url would have to somehow happen only for search engine spiders. That's feasible, but not something I've catered for.

To use a live example: http://wordsinside.com/rz - you will get redirected to: http://wordsinside.com/en/rz/lp/english-spanish-quality-professional-con... (if your browser it set for Spanish as preferred language you'll get redirected to the Spanish version.) The redirection could be switched off so that the browser stayed at http://wordsinside.com/rz - that would need some rules in the redirector and a list of client IPs or hostnames that should be redirected.

I'd be prepared to add this feature, it's an interesting idea, and pretty trivial to code (do you have the list of spiders though!???). Feel free to PM me if you prefer.

Hi netgenius
in your example, I am redirected to
http://wordsinside.com/en/tx/drupal-site-uses-path-finder-help-path-alia...

if the node title is in Arabic, you could get an ugly and frightening url. Try a node with the following title with pathauto (copy and paste)

حماة الديار عليكم سلام أبت أن تذل النفوس الكرام

some browsers will automatically urldecode() the url, but if you want to paste the link or share it, you will see.
Here is what I need:

1. xmlsitemap uses urls like: /tx/some node title in some language
2. spider visits the page and keeps using the long url for it.
3. user (human) clicks on that url and is automatically redirected to /tx
4. nodewords will declare /tx as the canonical uri or permalink
5. when shared on facebook/twitter or others, /tx will be the url detected.

Number 2 can be done by using a special theme for spiders based on the user agent (themekey, context, ...). I think this is outside the scope of this node.

Number 5 is a direct result of number 4.

My problem is 1,3 and 4. How can we do that?

1. xmlsitemap uses urls like: /tx/some node title in some language

That would work out-of-the-box.

2. spider visits the page and keeps using the long url for it.

Should also work without changes.

3. user (human) clicks on that url and is automatically redirected to /tx

Here's the change - that's more or less reverse to what PathFinder Redirect would currently do. So, feasible, but would need a different version of the redirect module.

4. nodewords will declare /tx as the canonical uri or permalink

I'm not sure what would happen with the current PathFinder and nodewords - could you test it?

5. when shared on facebook/twitter or others, /tx will be the url detected.

So you mean if a user posts/tweets the long url then it would be converted to the short /tx version? Would only work for fb's preview of the page:

• Facebook shows the final target (if redirected) in its preview of the referenced page, but I don't think it changes the url actually posted as shown in the body of the post. That's under fb's control of course.

• Twitter doesn't change what's posted even if the url is redirected (or 404 etc.) Test: http://t.co/A4XAUSE9 redirects to http://wordsinside.com/tx (done by twitter) but http://wordsinside.com/tx redirects to http://wordsinside.com/en/tx/drupal-site-uses-path-finder-help-path-alia... (done by PathFinder Redirect). So, no solution - Twitter is, understandably, using the url given, not the final target.

In summary, some of what you're asking is not feasible, as Facebook and Twitter won't support it - they will respect whatever url the user posted.

Oops, I forgot about this thread :)