Configuration FAQ

How do I map old URLs to pages in C1?

The website I am working on is a 'second generation' website where a lot of the 'old URLs' are of importance and should still 'work' after the new Composite C1 site launches. How can I associate 'old URLs' with pages in Composite C1, so visitors using old URLs get redirected to a related C1 page?

Answer:

You may solve this using one of the following tools:

  • the "Friendly URL" mechanism in Composite C1
  • the C1 add-ons that allows you to remap URLs
  • the IIS Rewrite module
  • custom 404 pages

The “Friendly URL” approach is by far the simplest and can be 'implemented' by the customers themselves, but there are some restrictions on this approach.

Mapping old URLs using the Friendly URLs

When editing a page you have a field labeled “Friendly URL” on the Settings tab. This field enables the editor to associate a “short URL” to the page and is typically used to create URLs for printed material and other external communication where a short URL like http://docs.c1.orckestra.com/Configuration-FAQ is desired.

If a page is given the Friendly URL “FAQ”, the resulting complete URL is http://docs.composite.net/FAQ - or on multilingual sites http://docs.composite.net/en-US/FAQ where ‘en-US’ is the “URL Mapping Name” of the page language.

The URL Mapping Name for a language can be controlled by editing the language in the System perspective. One (and only one) language can have an empty URL Mapping Name, making friendly URLs look like http://docs.composite.net/FAQ (i.e. no root folder is injected).

A Friendly URL need not be a short string – it could also be “Products/Plungers.php” – adding this to a page would make the URL http://www.contoso.com/Products/Plungers.php go to this page – again - provided that the URL Mapping Name of the pages language is an empty string.

So, in conclusion, customers that only have ‘old URLs’ pertaining to one language can use the Friendly URL feature right out of the box – the only requirement is that the language is configured to use an empty URL Mapping Name.

Please see "Friendly URLs".

Mapping old URLs using C1 add-ons

You can map old URLs to new URLs by using the functionality of one of the following C1 add-ons:

Mapping old URLs using the IIS URL Rewrite module

You can also make use of the IIS URL Rewrite module. For more information, please see http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/using-the-url-rewrite-module

Using custom 404 pages

If you are using the Hostname mappings of the URL Configuration feature in Composite C1, you can use custom 404 pages to catch and handle all the requests to no longer existing pages.

Please see "Hostnames"

Other tools

For advanced URL re-mapping tools, see http://www.helicontech.com/

Please see Creating a URL remapping functionality.