Knowledge Base

Create Friendly URLs

Last Modified:
06 Aug 2024
User Level:
Power User

A friendly or clean URL is a website address that is descriptive and human readable and it's really important for good SEO scores. The good news is that Terminalfour creates friendly URLs by default, that are based on the Section Names. If you wish to amend or enhance the way URLs are created there are a few ways to do so.

1. Channel Level

On a per Channel level you can configure the following settings that related to the URLs:

  • Path Conversion: Specify if upper or lower case should be used – this is especially useful if the host server is case sensitive, e.g. UNIX/Linux servers. For best-practice, we recommend lower case.
  • Convert Spaces in Output URI: Determine whether a space character in the output URI is replaced with a default value. We recommend turning this option on, to prevent space characters within URLs.
  • Convert Spaces in Section Name: Determine whether space characters in the section name should be replaced with a default value. We recommend turning this option on, to prevent space characters within URLs.
  • Convert Spaces in Retained Filenames: Determine whether a space character in a filename (e.g. image / pdf) is replaced with a default value. We recommend turning this option on, to prevent space characters within URLs.

The default value used by the channel settings is the File part separator in Preview & publish settings.

2. Per Section/Page

Output URI

When creating or modifying a section you have the option to set an Output URI. This enables you to specify the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that a section will be published to. If this field is left blank, the section's name is used when publishing. The Output URI is useful to shorten the URL if the section name is long or complex.

For example, you could specify an output URI of /sales/2002/fig as a shorter alternative to a section /salesinformation/year2002/figures.

You can restrict which user levels can set an Output URI as well as an Output URI Path in Role Customization.

Output File Name

When creating or modifying a section you have the option to set an Output filename. This enables you to specify the file name that will be used for the page. If left blank, the default file name set in the channel is used.

For example, you could specify a file name of whoweare.html and it will create a URL of .../whoweare.html.

This can be used in conjunction with the Output URI in three possible ways (parent = section parent folder, currentsectionname = current section name, outputuri = current section output URI, filename.html = the new file name in the current section):

  1. Output URI and Output Filename results in a published page as follows: parent/outputuri/filename.html.
  2. Output Filename results in a published page as follows: parent/filename.html.
  3. Output Filename but with a name which is the same as the channel index name (in this case filename.html) results in the following: parent/currentsectionname/filename.html.

The Enable output to filename can be enabled/disabled in Hierarchy configuration settings.

3. Fulltext filenames

Fulltext formatters can be used to link from one Content Layout to another. This can, for instance, be used for News Items to display only some of the elements on the main page (eg. Title, Date and Summary) and then link one of the elements (eg. Title) to the fulltext formatter to display the relevant elements (eg. Title, Date and Main Story). By default, the URL of the fulltext page would be similar to .../announcement-15028-en.html but this feature allows the filename of the fulltext page to be controlled by an element within the content type e.g. .../2011-02-25-Custom-Fulltext-file-names.html.

When creating the T4 Tag to link to the fulltext format, you can specify the Content Type Element to use in order to determine the friendly URL.

4. Uploaded files and media

Files, images and media added to your site should be set to retain the filename to ensure that files have friendly URLs. Selecting Enable Full Filenames in Preview & publish settings means that the original filenames are retained instead of assigning new ones.

Related information

When moving your site into Terminalfour you may want to adopt a new friendly URL naming convention and manage redirects from old URLs to new URLs.

Retain Existing URLs

One method would be to create the content in Terminalfour that has a Output URI and Output Filename that matches your existing page name, therefore retaining the original URL.

Redirects

Another method is to redirect the user to from the old URL to the new URL. This can be achieved by creating the redirects on the webserver (e.g. in Apache/IIS) or by using our Redirect Module.

Custom 404 "Page not found"

Most webservers will have a default page that is displayed when a user enters an incorrect address. This is also known as a "404 error page". A page can be created in Terminalfour that allows you to manage the content presented to website visitors. The content could contain a Search box and a list of frequently requested pages.

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

SEO reporting can be used to measure the effectiveness of your content.

Back to top