Hi there,

After checking on your site(both live and staging site) the only way to achieve this is by doing the same as what you have thought of, by creating additional single category menu items and not possible to use them using Grid.

You will need to create all single category menu items in order to achieved this so that it will shown as you wanted them to be shown on your site. Currently, it will always that Easyblog main menu item, that is (blog) and linked all post to it.

Please advice.

Of course that solution is TERRIBLE because it would create a TON of Menu Items because it would mean that every time we added a new blog post we would also need to create a corresponding menu item.

I will cease using the Grid and Magazine layouts now that I know they are what has been breaking the SEO friendly URLs all this time. It is a relief to finally know what the problem is.

I do wonder why the EasyBlog Single Category does NOT break the SEO friendly URLs but the Grid and Magazine layouts need to break the SEO Friendly URLs. Seems like a BUG to me. But, maybe it is a feature?

Of course, I have nothing to advise about this except that I am sad to not be able to use the Grid or Magazine layouts any more. But, it seems I have to choose between beautiful layouts or beautiful urls and I believe the urls are more important.

Sean

Hey there,

I am really sorry for the delay of this reply as it is a weekend for us here.

Of course that solution is TERRIBLE because it would create a TON of Menu Items because it would mean that every time we added a new blog post we would also need to create a corresponding menu item.

Is it possible for you elaborate more details regarding this part? Because i not really understand why need to create new menu item again if some of the new post published on the site?

By the way, if you would like to keep this blog URL structure (https://www.drcarney.com/help/information/getting-started/entry/what-does-a-plant-based-dinner-plate-look-like), and you do not want to display all these menu on the site frontend, you can move all these existing menu to 'Hidden' menu.

1. These menu will not appear on the main menu bar https://www.screencast.com/t/NpvSxTA7d
2. When you click on the single blog entry page, it will remain these same blog URL structure.
3. You can use Grid and Magazine menu on the site

Is it possible for you elaborate more details regarding this part? Because i not really understand why need to create new menu item again if some of the new post published on the site?

By the way, if you would like to keep this blog URL structure (https://www.drcarney.com/help/information/getting-started/entry/what-does-a-plant-based-dinner-plate-look-like), and you do not want to display all these menu on the site frontend, you can move all these existing menu to 'Hidden' menu.

Arlex, I am able to use both the grid and the magazine layouts anywhere I want. The problem is that those two layouts break my SEO friendly urls. The only exception to the rule is if I have created a menu (hidden or not hidden) that actually contains a link to every EasyBlog post in the category.

For examples you can see my pages at https://www.drcarney.com/activities/medical-supervision and also at https://www.drcarney.com/activities/public-speaking

These are the only places that I can use Grid or Magazine layout without breaking the SEO urls.

I can use the friendly urls for both the menu items that use the EasyBlog » (Posts) Frontpage » (Posts) Frontpage and the EasyBlog » (Categories) All Categories » (Categories) Single Category and you will see that if you click on any of the Titles of for the various pages they will display using SEO friendly urls.

Examples:
EasyBlog » (Posts) Frontpage » (Posts) Frontpage
https://www.drcarney.com/blog/admins-blog
All of the links go to SEO friendly URLs such as:
https://www.drcarney.com/success/heart-disease-success/from-health-scare-to-health-care
and
https://www.drcarney.com/success/weight-loss-success/shirley-loses-weight-loss-surgery-pounds-and-pills

EasyBlog » (Categories) All Categories » (Categories) Single Category
https://www.drcarney.com/resources/people-of-interest
All of the links go to SEO friendly URLs such as:
https://www.drcarney.com/resources/people-of-interest/cathy-fisher
and
https://www.drcarney.com/resources/people-of-interest/tracye-mcquirter-mph

If you were to change either of the menu items to use Grid Layout or Magazine Layout then all of the urls would instantly change to using the urls that would strip away all of the menus out of the urls.

The urls from above would all change to

https://www.drcarney.com/blog/from-health-scare-to-health-care
and
https://www.drcarney.com/blog/shirley-loses-weight-loss-surgery-pounds-and-pills
and
https://www.drcarney.com/blog/cathy-fisher
and
https://www.drcarney.com/blog/tracye-mcquirter-mph

This seems to me that if the Frontpage views can link to the menu driven URLs that the Grid and Magazine views should be able to as well. At least I would hope so. :-)

If that happened I would convert my site to mostly using Grid and Magazine views for sure as I love them. They are beautiful.

Sean

Thanks for took your time to explained this to me, may i know which existing menu you want to switch to use Grid/Magazine menu type?

Let said this 'success' menu -> http://take.ms/ZBoUV , you mean you want to change all these single category menu item to Grid/Magazine menu type?

Arlex,

That is very much what I would like to do. And so, I just tried setting up the grid layout for my url at https://www.drcarney.com/gems and it seemed like it was actually working perfectly with all the URLs being generated according to their menu items. So, I decided to do the same for the sub menu items as well. Then as I proceeded a few of the blog posts did have their blog post URL path change to no longer display their actual menu path once I assigned their menu item to Grid Layout.

I can consistently break these select urls and fix them again by changing which layout I am using. If I used the EasyBlog Single Category Layout then the urls become good. If I use the Grid Layout then the URLs go bad.

I have been pondering this for hours and believe that the issue may be related to how many EasyBlog items have been assigned to the Primary Category that corresponds to the Category being displayed in the Grid Layout. I am only displaying one category at a time on most of my Grid Layout pages.

I am going to leave one of the menus assigned to the Grid Layout that is causing a URL to break and will try to describe this in enough detail that you can easily reproduce the issue. And, I believe you will become convinced that something within the code for the Grid Layout is causing the problem. It is an odd problem.

Here is the page where you can see the broken url:

https://www.drcarney.com/success/allergy-success

There are three Items listed on that page and two of them have perfectly good URLs but one of them has had the url revert to /blog/ instead of /success/xxx

The title of that blog is "Shaela Improves Allergies and Gains Energy" and is trying to link to

https://www.drcarney.com/blog/shaela-improves-allergies-and-gains-energy

The other two are linking properly to

https://www.drcarney.com/success/womens-health-success/laura-avoids-hysterectomy
and
https://www.drcarney.com/success/cholesterol-success/ali-experiences-high-cholesterol-reversal

You can very easily fix the broken URL. All you have to do is change the Menu in the Gems menu that is named Allergy Success. If you change that menu item to be EasyBlog » (Categories) All Categories » (Categories) Single Category and to display the category "Allergy Success" then the url will correct itself and become

https://www.drcarney.com/success/allergy-success/shaela-improves-allergies-and-gains-energy

instead of

https://www.drcarney.com/blog/shaela-improves-allergies-and-gains-energy

To see this in action again you are welcome to change the Autoimmune Success menu item to use the Grid Layout and display the category "Autoimmune Success" in the Showcase Options and the Gird Options. When you do this you will see that the url for another of the blogs goes bad. This is for the blog "Pricy Experiences Vitiligo Going into Remission"

You will be able to flip the URL from
https://www.drcarney.com/success/autoimmune-success/pricy-experiences-vitiligo-going-into-remission
to
https://www.drcarney.com/blog/pricy-experiences-vitiligo-going-into-remission

To make the URL good again all you will have to do is change to use the EasyBlog Single Category layout displaying the "Autoimmune-Success" category.

You can also do this same thing with the Menu item named "Cancer Success"

The EasyBlog item there will have it's URL change depending on whether you are using the Grid Layout or the Single Category Layout.

Even though my site is live, you are welcome to try this out and see it. I can always make all the urls good again in the morning by changing the menus back to using the Single Categories.

BTW, I think that the problem maybe caused when an EasyBlog item is the only item that has selected a category as Primary Category. That would mean that only ONE EasyBlog Item/post has been assigned to the Primary Category.

Thanks, Sean

Hey Sean,

It seems like I was unable to login from your live site backend, can you check?

Arlex,

I just logged in to http://www.drcarney.com/administrator using the Joomla login and password that I put into the "Additional Information — Hidden From Public" area when I created this ticket and it worked. This is at the very bottom of the Additional Information area.

Please try again. I know it works because it just worked for me. I copied the password and pasted it in.

I also just pasted it into the Site Details area at the top.

Sean

It seems like you have put those info into optional area, I can able to login now.

Here is the page where you can see the broken url:

https://www.drcarney.com/success/allergy-success

There are three Items listed on that page and two of them have perfectly good URLs but one of them has had the url revert to /blog/ instead of /success/xxx

The title of that blog is "Shaela Improves Allergies and Gains Energy" and is trying to link to

https://www.drcarney.com/blog/shaela-improves-allergies-and-gains-energy

The other two are linking properly to

https://www.drcarney.com/success/womens-health-success/laura-avoids-hysterectomy
and
https://www.drcarney.com/success/cholesterol-success/ali-experiences-high-cholesterol-reversal

Based on what i checked, actually that is not the issue, the reason why this "Shaela Improves Allergies and Gains Energy" blog post doesn't show the correct URL structure format is because your existing menu item do not have single category menu item for this blog category "Allergy Success".

The current blog URL routing behaviour will always check for the existing menu item and see whether there got any single category menu item created or not, for example :

I've created 3 blog posts on the site and each of the blog post assign to different categories.
- Cholesterol Success (This category assign to Blog A)
- Allergy Success (This category assign to Blog B)
- Weight Loss Success (This category assign to Blog C)

I have created 2 single category menu item for these 2 categories (Cholesterol Success and Weight Loss Success) and 1 Grid menu item.

So these 3 blog URL will be :
Blog A - site.com/Cholesterol-Success/blog-title
Blog B - site.com/Grid-menu-alias/blog-title
Blog C - site.com/Weight-Loss-Success/blog-title

By the way, maybe you can try my following suggestion and see whether it meet your current requirement or not?

1. Make your Gems menu to hidden, mean do not show this Gems menu on frontend.

2. Switch back those Grid menu type to single category menu type and assign to the correct category. http://take.ms/Rmuk8

3. Create back your Gems menu structure but this time make all the menu type to use URL menu type under (Menu > System Link > URL), you can refer on my following screenshot.
- http://take.ms/QmtVE
- http://take.ms/PqdsT
What i trying to do is setup all those menu structure from the hidden menu, then create a list of menu URL type to use back all these URL link and display on the frontend menu.

4. In this way, you can add your favourite grid menu type from this Gems hidden menu as well, but unfortunately this menu alias you have to use other name since that original alias name already used for the single category menu alias.

So the end result will become :
1. it will remain back the original blog URL structure.
2. You can display grid layout without break the URL structure

But in order to achieve this, you have to manually re-create those new menu item and re-setup all these again on your site.

Hope this suggestion can help you much here.

Arlex,

I am grateful for all the time and energy you put into helping me to understand this. I do still have one question.

I actually am doing something similar in that I have created a separate "Menu" for each of the headings on my main menu. I then created my main menu basically completely out of System alias links instead of URL links. This also gives me whatever url was set up on the section menu. In our example this menu is titled Gems. I have been displaying this Gems menu but only as a sidebar navigation tool in the Gems section.

The question I have about your solution is that I understand the logic of creating a 'hidden' menu in order to create the specific URLs.

I also understand the concept of making the System links for the real menu to point to the URL in question.

What I have not been able to grasp is what step is needed to assign the grid layout to the menu? It seems like my hidden menu needs to have the Single Categories in order for the Grid layout to work properly. Then my second Gems menu that is not hidden would consist of 100% system URLs. So, what is the next step to be able to assign the Grid Layout to a menu item?

If I understand correctly, your site menu is referring to this 'Main Menu' right? (screenshot : http://take.ms/yxZKb )

If yes, i think that is not possible to create same alias name right?

If that is the case, when you create a blog grid menu type under this 'Germs' menu, you have to use another menu alias name.

For example :

1. Add a grid menu (set to only show 'Allergy Success') under this 'Gems' menu
2. Switch this ('Allergy Success ' menu item alias) inside the menu to this grid menu what you created just now. (I mean under Main Menu)
3. So when the user view on this grid menu on the site, those blog URL structure still remain the same structure.

Can you give it a try and see whether this is what you want to achieve? I afraid i might be misunderstand your current requirement.

Thank you very much. I will play around with this more.

BTW, here is how I set up my site

I have a series of Menus (one for each heading like blog, club (community) etc. and I create all the links in those menus. Then in the Main Menu module EVERYTHING except the home page is actually a menu item alias to the other menus.

I found found that if I make the top level of each of these menus a Grid Layout and load all the child categories then I can get a nice looking grid layout for all the items as long as all the child menus are also all single categories. So, this may be how I keep it.

But, i am going to try to wrap my head around what you have suggested as well.

Thank you for all your help on this.

Sean

You're most welcome Sean, keep us update if you need any help with this.

Hi Guys

Apologies for crashing this thread. I have bookmarked it and will return to it at a future point. (Also use Grid Layout). I just do not have the head space to get my head around this at the moment but maybe this could be the basis of a "Developer Insights" Blog Post?

just an idea

Paul

hey Paul,

If you referring this menu structure, it actually depend on the site owner what kind of blog URL format they would like to build, that is very difficult to write into blog post to explain about this.

If you have issue with this, perhaps you can start a new thread on our forum so we will see if we can able to provide you some suggestion regarding this.

Hey Arlex

Thanks for your response.

If you have issue with this, perhaps you can start a new thread on our forum so we will see if we can able to provide you some suggestion regarding this.

Honestly I am not sure if I have an issue.
(My goal is to create a site that is as close to a mobile app as possible)
I need to read this again and do some double checking.

thanks for your kind offer and wishing you a great weekend.

best

Paul

No problem Paul.