Conflict with "forums" Menu Item Alias in ED4
By Inspire Theme LTD on Friday, 29 July 2016
Posted in Technical Issues
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Hey guys,

It seems that in ED4.x, "forums" is a reserved word for the routing.
But this brings a major issue to the table. Here's my particular setup and the problem...

We have a Menu Item that is of type "Frontpage Layout" (I tested with the new "Forums Layout" but the problem is the same). This menu item has "forums" alias, therefore the generated URL on the frontend is:

http://www.websitename.com/forums

The above works perfectly fine in ED3.x, but in ED4.x, since you added the "Forums" capability, you also reserved the "forums" word for your routing.
I cannot keep the above setup, because none of the links in ED4.x work - they are just not properly routed.

Yeah, the workaround is to change our Menu Item Alias to something else, to remove the "s" and make it just "forum". But this brings a whole new problem, a major problem... actually, it brings 2 major problems:

1. Google has already indexed our URLs. It is not that simple to just change them. And I really do not want to play with redirects, be it with an extension or directly in the ".htaccess" file.

2. We have few hundred discussions already. In many of these discussions we have pasted links to other (existing) discussions so the user can read them. If I change the Menu Item Alias, all these links will get broken. We'll have to review each and every discussion and change the URLs manually (which is quite unacceptable).

So, is there a way to release the "forums" word in the next update of ED4.x?
If not, what solution would you offer for our scenario, so we do not need to change the current Menu Item Alias?

Thank you in advance and I hope you understand the seriousness of this issue.
Hey there,

I am sorry for the delay of this reply,

I would suggest you to change your current `Easydiscuss frontpage layout` menu type to use `Easydiscuss forums layout`. So that all the URL format will same like before.
Arlex Wong
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Monday, 01 August 2016 11:11
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Hi Arlex,

As I wrote in my previous comment, I already tried that but it doesn't work, the problem is still the same:

We have a Menu Item that is of type "Frontpage Layout" (I tested with the new "Forums Layout" but the problem is the same).


Here, have a look at this video, it shows everything (watch it in Fullscreen and FullHD for better quality).

Please, either suggest us an acceptable workaround (where we do not need to change our URLs) or just fix it in the next version of ED4.x, just release the "forums" word.
Inspire Theme LTD
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Monday, 01 August 2016 15:47
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I already discuss this with our team and still investigate a better way to solve this, I will keep you update on this once I get our team respond.
Arlex Wong
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Tuesday, 02 August 2016 22:01
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Thank you Arlex!
I really hope that you will fix this for 4.0.8 as I cannot wait another month or two.

As you probably remember, the only working "EasyDiscuss for OSMap" plugin that I have is for ED4.x so I need to update.
Inspire Theme LTD
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Tuesday, 02 August 2016 22:13
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You're welcome.

Today I get our developer respond regarding this issue, we will suggest you to use 3rd party extension sh404sef to fix this conflict.

You can follow my instruction to solve this conflict issue :
1. Set `Easydiscuss frontpage layout` menu item to use 'forums' alias
2. Create another menu `Forums layout` menu item to use `support` alias
3. Install Sh404sef extension
4. Open Sh404sef configuration setting > set use menu alias - YES (screenshot : http://take.ms/b7KPq )
5. Download my attached file and replace into this file location : JoomlaFolder\components\com_easydiscuss\sef_ext\com_easydiscuss.php (This hack is remove the discussion view alias `question`/`post` , so the post URL will be http://site.com/forums/post-title)

Keep us update if the conflict still persists.
Arlex Wong
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Wednesday, 03 August 2016 17:12
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Hi Arlex,

This is what I said in my first post:

Google has already indexed our URLs. It is not that simple to just change them. And I really do not want to play with redirects, be it with an extension or directly in the ".htaccess" file.


I'm really not interested in installing sh404sef (or any other extension) or doing any redirects through the .htaccess file.

I'm also a bit confused of what you said:

This hack is remove the discussion view alias `question`/`post` , so the post URL will be http://site.com/forums/post-title


My URLs do not have "question" or "post". You do not need to hack anything in order to accomplish this. ED provides such an option in the Admin (see the attached screenshot).

Anyway, I just noticed that in ED4.x you also put the discussion ID in the URL, while in ED3.x there was no discussion ID:

ED3.x URL: http://website.com/forum/the-title-of-the-discussion
ED4.x URL: http://website.com/forum/645-the-title-of-the-discussion

I do understand that the change in ED4.x is good in terms of routing discussions with the same title but it makes the migration from ED3.x a real pain in the a**.

So, at the end, it is impossible to keep the same URL structure that we have in ED3.x once we update to ED4.x?
There are two "issues" here:

1. The "forums" word that you have hardcoded in your routing
2. The addition of the discussion ID

Arlex, would you please ask Mark and some of the developers to join this discussion so we can discuss this further so I can take to correct decision for our website? Thank you.
Inspire Theme LTD
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Wednesday, 03 August 2016 18:20
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Hey there,

You're welcome.

This is what I said in my first post:

Google has already indexed our URLs. It is not that simple to just change them. And I really do not want to play with redirects, be it with an extension or directly in the ".htaccess" file.

I'm really not interested in installing sh404sef (or any other extension) or doing any redirects through the .htaccess file.

I believe this is the better solution to install sh404sef extension in your site, it will not get any bad effect, because sh404SEF can rewrites Joomla URL to user-friendly format based on how you setup and it also help you improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic to your site. So that you do not need to wait for Google reindex again all of your existing discussion URL.


I'm also a bit confused of what you said:

This hack is remove the discussion view alias `question`/`post` , so the post URL will be http://site.com/forums/post-title


My URLs do not have "question" or "post". You do not need to hack anything in order to accomplish this. ED provides such an option in the Admin (see the attached screenshot).

If you install Sh404sef extension, the default Easydiscuss routing will show `question/post` alias from the discussion URL.


Anyway, I just noticed that in ED4.x you also put the discussion ID in the URL, while in ED3.x there was no discussion ID:

ED3.x URL: http://website.com/forum/the-title-of-the-discussion
ED4.x URL: http://website.com/forum/645-the-title-of-the-discussion


You can turn this off from backend > Easydiscuss > setting > search engine > Allow unicode alias - NO, you can refer on my attached screenshot below.
Arlex Wong
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Thursday, 04 August 2016 12:05
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Hi Arlex,

Thanks. Yes, disabling Allow unicode alias removed the discussion ID from the URL.
It is strange, because in my ED3.x installation I have Allow unicode alias set to YES, and the URLs do not have the discussion ID. No, honestly... if you want I can record a video and you will see.

Can you tell me why it is different in ED3.x and ED4.x?

Anyway, it is good that one can disable the discussion ID from the URLs, I'm happy about it (but please see the above question).

Regarding SH404SEF - Arlex, I've used this extension a lot. I used it on all my websites few years ago. But now Joomla is good enough in terms of SEF/SEO. I have a proper menu structure and I do not need to re-write my URLs or do anything else. I do not want to install SH404SEF only because of ED. I hope you understand me.

So, let's figure this out once and forever - are your developers not interested in releasing the "forums" keyword from ED4.x itself? Is it so badly hardcoded in the routing?
If you just fix this problem (with the "forums" alias) I will be able to update straight away. This is the only thing that is stopping me.
Inspire Theme LTD
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Thursday, 04 August 2016 15:50
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You're welcome.


Thanks. Yes, disabling Allow unicode alias removed the discussion ID from the URL.
It is strange, because in my ED3.x installation I have Allow unicode alias set to YES, and the URLs do not have the discussion ID. No, honestly... if you want I can record a video and you will see.

Can you tell me why it is different in ED3.x and ED4.x?

It okay, we can actually test it on our locally which using ED3.x version.
The reason why it different like before is because last time we implement this feature `allow unicode alias` in Easydiscuss 3.x, the workflow was not suppose to work like this, it should append the id from the URL so that system can identify what is that post and redirect to that post page if the URL included accent/unicode words.


Regarding SH404SEF - Arlex, I've used this extension a lot. I used it on all my websites few years ago. But now Joomla is good enough in terms of SEF/SEO. I have a proper menu structure and I do not need to re-write my URLs or do anything else. I do not want to install SH404SEF only because of ED. I hope you understand me.

So, let's figure this out once and forever - are your developers not interested in releasing the "forums" keyword from ED4.x itself? Is it so badly hardcoded in the routing?
If you just fix this problem (with the "forums" alias) I will be able to update straight away. This is the only thing that is stopping me.

The main issue with the 'forums' is that, this menu alias of yours is now conflicting with EasyDiscuss4 `forums` view name. This is a common issue in Joomla and you should avoid using any view name of a component as your menu alias when upgrade to Easydiscuss4. Also, it is not possible to rename the view name from EasyDiscuss at this point of time as there are existing customers that already upgraded to EasyDiscuss 4.0.
In my opinion, the fastest way to fix your issue with the 'forums' alias is to use SH404sef extension.
Arlex Wong
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Thursday, 04 August 2016 19:26
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Ok, thanks Arlex.
I understand... I'm not happy with that, but I understand and I will see how I will proceed.
Inspire Theme LTD
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Thursday, 04 August 2016 19:42
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Hi there,

You are most welcome, thanks for understand.

As a gentle reminder, kindly start a new thread if you have any other issue in the future so it will be easier for us to manage your inquiry. I will lock and mark this thread as resolved.
Arlex Wong
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Friday, 05 August 2016 12:34
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