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About
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web site and provides the webmaster with a site they can administer with a minimal amount of HTML knowledge through a web browser.
But, PostNuke's functionality can be increased by installing modules, blocks and themes. For example, you can add a forum, a gallery and contact form. You can also change how your entire site looks by changing themes. All of this can be done with just a few clicks in the administration panel saving you hours of time, both in the initial creation of the website and in its day to day maintenance.
PostNuke can do anything from traditional blog websites, to a community members' only website with hundreds of users. PostNuke
Generated on January 30, 2009.
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Trac - NOC Replacement
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hard to maintain. We're hoping you'll find the trac installation easy to use and navigate, and an improved NOC in all respects.
From the perspective of third party developers, trac provides a useful administration interface from which you can administrate all aspects of your project, from it's description to SVN commits list and file downloads. Trac also has much better milestone and target tracking for bugs and releases.
As a user, you can search the available projects, and use the clean navigation to find your way around. There's also an online SVN browser where you'll be able to look at a project's source code.
Chris is looking to begin converting projects over from the NOC as soon as possible. On request, he can import tracker and SVN history, or alternatively you can start afresh. He'd like to talk to people as he makes the conversion so that if anyone's missing something useful, or has suggestions he can improve the Trac installation for everyone.
Looking to the future, we'll convert the core PostNuke project over to Trac. We'll also try to get single sign on between community.postnuke.com and Trac working if possible.
If you are a third party developer, be aware that we are planning to close the NOC in the future. If you have active projects you should have them converted to Trac as soon as possible. All NOC content will be archived, however due to the ongoing spam issues we will eventually remove the NOC from public access
Generated on May 4, 2008.
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GSoC Interview: Mathieu Prevel
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2. What attracted you to the Google Summer of Code as a programme, and PostNuke as a project?
For me, the Google Summer of Code is the opportunity to carry out an interesting project and better know the open source evolution.
I do think that type of knowledge should be shared. That is why I like open source, and why I did my utmost to be accepted into your organisation to program with you during this Google Summer Of Code. Actually, by making easier the creation of a website for anybody you get close to my way of thinking.
I want to participate to an Open Source project because I already take advantage of the work of the Open Source community. (I use Mandriva with KDE, I can program with PHP, C...) I couldn't be who I am without the Open Source community. It is my way to thank it.
3. Tell us about your project, and how you hope it can benefit PostNuke?
My project is a revisions control. It will be a user-friendly central system GUI in the admin panel which could allow to see the different versions and to revert to a previous version.
All existing modules and future modules should be easily added to this revisions control.
It could be very useful if there is some admins.
5. What do you personally hope to gain from participating in the Summer of Code with PostNuke?
This GSOC is the opportunity to realize something useful for everybody. Due to Open Source I could meet people who live all around the world and learn to know them. I could learn who they are, and share my time with people who have the same hobby I have.
I do think it is an interesting experience and a human adventure.
6. Can you see yourself contributing your talents to Open Source projects following the SoC? Will you continue to work with PostNuke in some capacity after the programme has ended?
I am very interested in Open Source projects thus I would contribute to them and carry on with PostNuke after this GSoC.
7. Is there anything else you’d like to say now, as the programme begins?
I would thank you PostNuke again to choose me to realize this project and the community which is very friendly. I am excited to begin.
Lastly, thanks for your time – we in the PostNuke team are excited about the Summer of Code, so thank you for taking part and
Generated on April 28, 2008.
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GSoC Interview: Carlos Mauro
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2. What attracted you to the Google Summer of Code as a programme, and PostNuke as a project?
I looked at Google Summer Code as a great challenge. But I do not dare. Until this year, if I did. I applied to several projects related to the topic of usability. And because apply to PostNuke some years ago I work as freelance. Develop some portals for small businesses in my country using postnuke and other CMS. PostNuke is attractive because this was installed in a single attempt. I was surprised. So I think support.
3. Tell us about your project, and how you hope it can benefit PostNuke?
I'm copying what we present in my proposal:
The criteria for the evaluation usability are:
Comparison of controls on Good Practices or patterns Usability on the Web.
Include improvements within the Framework.
Create a guide to improve and documenting findings to the community PostNuke.
a. Usability
To improve the usability of Postnuke i will work graphical interfaces suggested some of the modules and the framwork which are used in the forms. Attempts to put in these modules some good practices and standards for Web usability.
I will Work with what is necessary XHTML, CSS, Ajax whether it is possible to implement and methodically.
b. Accessibility and conformance
For the accessibility i take the the Guidelines and techniques(6). After the programing process. I will make a list for test usability. I will Choose 6 to 7 cms users to test usability with the corrections. The proceeds will help create iterations for each test.
c. Maintainability
Maintenance may accelerate taking intoaccount that at the end of the draft the conclusions will be made in the form of best practices for Web usability postnuke. I will help in the incorporation and supporting of usability guide line in other modules PostNuke.
In the forums I will clarify the tasks of the project and also its scope.
4. What do you personally hope to gain from participating in the Summer of Code with PostNuke?
Many, many experience in knowing more about how a community of developers interested in do make a good product. Learning from good programming practices and especially knowing more about web usability. Of course Social Recognition.
I want postnuke as a milestone in the renewed Internet.
5. Can you see yourself contributing your talents to Open Source projects following the SoC? Will you continue to work with PostNuke in some capacity after the programme has ended?
The GSOC ends after a month of my graduation from college. I hope to finish that time almost all my tasks in the project. I would like to leave a module to test usability. I feel a duty to contribute to the community. I am confident that the project can achieve more significant improvements in its next release and then create or generate support the development of future lines. It should not be discouraged postnuke which has short market ... we see the top, be with them and then jump to heaven.
6. Is there anything else you’d like to say now, as the programme begins?
I would like to see other issues as the framework and its implementation in business or insert google app into the framework. I would like to make a strategic planning for IT postnuke. Devising strategies to make the best CMS, simply: Easy.
Not only is needed to schedule some things to achieve a well-accepted product.Need to know that is what the user wants in the next 5 years and venture into that vision. So I count on your support to work with postnuke .... And of course do my project as realistic as possible in these 3 months in the hope that is of benefit to all.
Lastly, thanks for your time – we in the PostNuke team are excited about the Summer of Code, so thank you for taking part and choosing PostNuke!
We are going ... postnuke to make the Best CMS, the easiest. GEN a social network that seems to make FaceBook a grain of sand in our seas.
I will continue reviewing more documentation and adjusting the project to postnuke with the help of my mentor Steffen Voß and
Generated on April 27, 2008.
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GSOC Interview: John Pritchard
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2. What attracted you to the Google Summer of Code as a programme, and PostNuke as a project?
I was attracted to GSoC because I enjoy coding and I thought that I could do with some experience before I actually get a job and I can also help out the community while I'm at it :). I chose PostNuke in particular because php is the language I have the most experience with, I made countless websites through my teenage years and I also spent a lot of time modifying PHP-Nuke to suit my needs (although the code I used is probably buried somewhere now), so I thought it'd be the project that would benefit the most from me and it'd be the one I'd be most comfortable doing.
3. Tell us about your project, and how you hope it can benefit PostNuke?
I'm going to be doing an overhaul of the categories system in PostNuke. I hope it will benefit PostNuke by increasing the usability and efficiency of the categories system.
4. What do you personally hope to gain from participating in the Summer of Code with PostNuke?
Experience and something to put on my CV :)
The satisfaction of doing something productive in the community.
Money - I'm a broke student, so it has to be said :P.
5. Can you see yourself contributing your talents to Open Source projects following the SoC? Will you continue to work with PostNuke in some capacity after the programme has ended?
Depends on time constraints really, I'd definately consider it if I had quite a bit of free time but at the moment I'm pretty swamped with work, I have a few projects of my own that I've had to put on the backburner =\.
7. Is there anything else you’d like to say now, as the programme begins?
I wish everyone good luck with their respective projects and I hope to speak to you all soon :)...Oh and "hey mum, I'm on the internet!" :P.
Lastly, thanks for your time – we in the PostNuke team are excited about the Summer of Code, so thank you for taking part and choosing PostNuke!
I'm excited too, thanks for choosing me!
Generated on April 25, 2008.
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GSoC Interview: Daniel Byrd
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American and English whenever it’s convenient (It’s pretty much only more convenient to be American when trying to enter America).
I enjoy doing a bit of drawing here and there and pretty much any reasonable kind of sport, especially team sports. But as far as interesting hobbies go I don’t raise boa constrictors or compete for the world record for juggling with flaming knives or anything like that. I guess I need to take something up so I can better answer these kinds of questions.
I currently run www.lincolnjcr.com (technically not completely finished yet) where I’ve implemented a specific self-made content management system, which probably had something to do with what drew me to Postnuke.
2. What attracted you to the Google Summer of Code as a programme, and PostNuke as a project?
What tempted me about the GSOC program was the flexibility of the whole system, working where you want, when you want, as well the opportunity to get paid to code, which probably wouldn’t have been possible otherwise and is obviously going to offer some useful experience.
PostNuke seemed like a project I could actually make an impact on, as I already have a decent head start in all the required areas, I didn’t like the idea of taking a plunge into the unknown and having to spend half the time trying to figure out what was actually going on rather than actually contributing. Also a lot of people use websites, and a lot of people benefit from Postnuke, so the idea of contributing to something genuinely useful to many people was a factor for me.
3. Tell us about your project, and how you hope it can benefit PostNuke?
I’ve been on countless websites where the search functionality is just not up to scratch, it’s frustrating to say the least. Although Postnuke already has a fairly well implemented search module, theres room for improvement. My project is essentially to construct a fully functional search engine for PostNuke. Actually, two. One direct port of an existing search system, (along the lines of htdig or phpdig) and one more specific implementation that works more intimately with PostNuke.
The outcome for Postnuke should be the following the features:
Unsharp searches so that users get probably expected results in spite of typing or spelling errors.
Searching of non-html documents (such as open office documents and PDF)
Improvements in performance. Currently, each module is queried individually, multiple results for the same page are displayed more than once and there is no way of displaying searches by relevance.
(If time allows) Semantic searches (ie content added by person x)
5. What do you personally hope to gain from participating in the Summer of Code with PostNuke?
I’m looking forward to getting an insider’s perspective on an open source project as I don’t really know much about open source, and this seems like the best way to learn more. Of course in terms of further work prospects, this is a useful bit of experience to have for sure. It would also be nice to make some friends in the process.
6. Can you see yourself contributing your talents to Open Source projects following the SoC? Will you continue to work with PostNuke in some capacity after the programme has ended?
It’s a definite possibility, I’ll have to see how it goes and see how much I enjoy it. It also depends on how much spare time I have as well I guess. But I’d definitely consider it.
7. Is there anything else you’d like to say now, as the programme begins?
I’d like to thank the people here at PostNuke for applying to GSOC so that I could have this opportunity, and I’d like to say that I’m looking forward to the next few months and that I’ll do my best to make my effort a worthwhile addition to PostNuke.
Lastly, thanks for your time – we in the PostNuke team are excited about the Summer of Code, so thank you for taking part and choo
Generated on April 23, 2008.
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Meeting 2008 - Announcement and invitation
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discussions for users and developers to take place at the same time. A workshop is in consideration as well, to diversify the agenda.
At this time we are still at the beginning of planning, but will delve into it during the next weeks and give an account of it in regular intervals. We have several ideas, especially due to the large feedback from last year. For instance, we are up to start a shuttle service as designated by multiple people. There will certainly be a supporting programme again - how this will look like and if proportionate costs, in form of a fixed amount, which has to be carried by the participants themselves, will incur thereby is still open though. But we will make an effort to keep this amount as low as possible (less than 25 Euro). It is also not certain yet where and in which form the traditional prelude event on Friday will be.
Since there were already three companions last year, we want to organize a secondary agenda which is going to happen parallel with the primary conference and is being overseen by my girlfriend. However, during the complete supporting programme, for example the dinner on Saturday, both groups will be together.
Many other details like possibilities for arrival as well as accommodations and the program itinerary will be recorded in the Wiki [5] (German only). Also preliminary suggestions for lectures, workshops and discussions can be handled there. In coincidence of The Rhineland Palatinate's State Garden Show [6] happening simultaneously, a shortage at close hotels may arise. We will put several addresses and alternatives into the Wiki this very day. Please take care as soon as possible for corresponding reservations. If there should occur any problems, I am within reach and of help at axel@zikula.org.
We are looking forward to a large attendance [7].Registrations are without commitment, but exceedingly helpful for our organization, particularly as we must roughly estimate the total amount of persons. Also the information how many people are going to bring along their partners, is very important for the planning. The first meeting which is all about $newname is hopefully going to become an exciting and innovative performance with active participation.
Links:
http://www.bingen.de/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingen_am_Rhein
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1066
http://www.fh-bingen.de/
http://camp-zikula.info/wiki/
http://www.landesgartenschau-bingen-2008.de/
http://camp-zikula.info/contact/
Generated on April 1, 2008.
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Development Update, 2008-01
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.8 Final: the next step after RC3
Since the release of RC3, already a lot of bugfixes have been committed to the repository. The developers have agreed to address all new features to the .9 tree, where the two major changes (UTF-8 and gettext, see below) are already in active development. This should result in much shorter release cycles (and earlier release dates) also, and give module developers much more clarification on what to change in order to make their module work under the new major release. If needed, an final bugfizing weekend may still be organised for .8 final.
The upgrade from .764 installations on certain systems has been improved, by increasing the memory_limit to 64M. However, this only works for php version 5.2.1 and above.
Upgrading to .8 together with some 3rd party modules may raise problems when the modules upgrade process is not failsafe for .8 or if the upgrade function uses core functions of modules that are not available yet. Therefore the upgrade of 3rd party modules in general is avoided by following a white list of core modules.
Most site-specific data can already be easily overridden using the /config and /themes directories. The Multisites module however still needs some futher thought on the best way of running multiple sites from a single install. One method having multiple unrelated (i.e. non table sharing) sites of a single install would be to have config/site1, config/site2 etc., this will be postponed to a next release.
The Tour module is now in a state where it can be translated to other languages as well. Just translate the templates and put them in a subdir with the appropriate language abbrevation, all within the pntemplates directory.
MultiCategorization introduction and issues since
As earlier announced, a last fix for supporting MultiCategorization has been added to the core just before the release of RC3. Since those changes, another small fix was then required to be fully backwards compatible. On the module-devs list, the devs have discussed a lot on how to solve these issues. Chances are great that if the new (already committed) patches do not solve the problems, MultiCategorization might be postponed to later versions in order to fully test the new features.
For more information on MultiCategorization, visit this thread in the forum.
DOM extension to use correct paths in JavaScript
Some javascripts, eg. the lightbox, need to know the path to the system and the entrypoint as well (which can be configured in the settings), otherwise they may fail in case of short urls being enabled. Since dynamic javascript creation might be a performance problem, some inline javascript is added to the pagevars to extend the DOM:
- document.location.entrypoint: will be set to what is configured to be the entrypoint
- document.location.pnbaseURL: will point to the result of pnGetBaseURL();
Any ideas on how to make his more unobtrusive are very welcome!
PostNuke Upgrade Distribution
In previous articles and posts, the term '.8 upgrade pack' was used to represent a full .8 package, including 3rd party modules, to upgrade to .8 from an existing .764 installation. However, the term 'upgrade pack' is not quite correct and misleading, because it implies to be an upgrade package with changed files only, while the main parts remain as-is. The transition between .764 and .8 requires a complete exchange of all files, so the so called upgrade package is a complete distribution.
Now it remains what modules should be in an upgrade distribution, to be able to fully upgrade an existing .764 installation, including new versions of 3rd party modules. These include Downloads 2.2, pnMessages, Polls 2.0, bbcode / bbsmile, Weblinks, EZComments and MultiHook at least. This might need some additional testing with certain versions also.
Core changes and additions in the .9 tree
Mark has already overhauled some core API methods and calls. All systems modules are now using the Renderer Class instead of pnRender. Also, a first pass has been committed in changing all pn* function calls to new object method calls. For example, pnModGetInfo is replaced with ModuleUtil::getInfo and pnSecGenAuthKey is replaced with SecurityUtil::generateAuthKey.
For those who did not know: A class pnCompat.php still includes most oldstyle API calls for backwards compatibility.
GetText and Default DB Charset
Bernd is progressing rapidly on integrating gettext in de development tree, and has added po-files for all core modules. The required PHP version for .9 has already been set to a minimum of 5.1.6, and since version 5.0, MySql supports different character sets and corresponding collating orders. To run an application in UTF-8 (unicode) it is not sufficient to change the character set for PN; we needed to set the database encoding (actually server and client) to UTF-8 as well.
A user who wishes to run his site in multiple languages, needs to decide the database encoding at installation time. The default is UTF-8, because the current iso-8859-1 is restricted to too few language combinations. UTF-8 is a 'no-worry' setting because it will work with any language (as long as it is UTF-8 encoded.
This change is $PNConfig['DBInfo']['default']['dbcharset'] = 'utf-8';
To cache or not to cache, that's the question
Also discussed on the devs-list is the current (and future) state of output caching within PostNuke. Why should any application repeat the same processing tasks on a item that hasn't changed?
Not caching anything is fine if one has got infinite resources to throw at a site (and even then there are limits). But in reality there are finite resources and you need to take steps to ensure that those resources are effectively used. One method for that is not wasting precious resources repeating the same tasks time after time.
The key is effective cache management. Currently we put too much load onto the module to handle it's own caching. Once you then
Generated on March 2, 2008.
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Going OpenID
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(if you already know OpenID then jump directly to the last section about
OpenID in PostNuke)
OpenID - a Free, Decentralized Online Identity
OpenID is a relatively new web-technology for managing your online identity. It's primary purpose is to facilitate Single Sign On across independent websites. This means you can create yourself an OpenID identity and use that for login in to different websites without having to retype your password over and over again.
Your OpenID consists of a URL, e.g., http://jornwildt.myopenid.com, and the OpenID technology makes it possible for you to prove that you own this URL. So, when you want to log in to a website supporting OpenID, you type this URL and then the website takes care of the rest (almost). EnThinnai Blog compares OpenIDs to credit cards: credit cards are issued by someone, it proves your identity at the issuer, you can have as many cards as you want, and in OpenID's case you can even use them to get access to places.
You can also use your OpenID to sign a weblog comment without the need to register as a user on that website. No one else can do that with your URL so your comments cannot be spoofed by anyone.
Take a look at these demos of how it works in some applications: OpenID for WordPress.
OpenID on blogger.com.
OpenID at
plaxo.com.
On Simon Willison's website you can also see some good examples of what OpenID can be used for.
One very interesting thing is that OpenID has just been adopted by Yahoo! So now each and every one of the 250 million Yahoo! users have their own OpenID identity. Even Google, IBM, Microsoft, and VeriSign have signed up to support the new technology. With that kind of backing OpenID is no more a kids toy.
OpenID is of course not the perfect solution for everything
(see for instance idcorner.org) but I would say it is close to perfect for Single Sign On and signing comments in the web/PostNuke world I live in.
If you want to start using your own OpenID then get one at
myopenid.com - it's free and it's all you need.
OpenID in a PostNuke world
PostNuke should of course also have such a thing as OpenID for Single Sign On, user registration, signing comments and so on. So a new OpenID module for Single Sign On and user registration is on it's way (expected release in March or April). Have fun with it.
An OpenID implementation with PostNuke should also enable you to use your PostNuke installation as an Identity Provider, meaning that your OpenID could be YourName.YourSite.com. Hopefully the OpenID module will support this.
Other uses for OpenID in PostNuke could be to sign comments using the ezComments module or pre-allow access to certain Mediashare photo albums through your friends OpenIDs. Only the sky is the limit and OpenID is free for you to use and invent with.
Regards, Jørn Wildt
Generated on February 29, 2008.
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Url rewriting on Postnuke 0.8
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Main principles of the mod rewrite
For information, the URL rewriting is a module that you can activated in your apache to rewrite the links of a site in order to simplify their reading.
The idea is that the Pn Team also thought that the mod rewrite was not necessarily available / activated on all types of servers (particularly on Windows servers). Indeed, the Postnuke team offers rewritings based on tips already heavily used in management systems like blogs.
Before you begin, here is the format of a link without rewriting.
without rewriting
index.php?module=Users&func=logout Index.php? Users & module = func = logout
URL rewriting without mod rewrite
This rewriting reproduced a "virtual" Folders system on your site, links look like this
URL rewriting without mod rewrite
index.php/Users/logout
In terms of mechanism, it is very simple, when your Web server receives a request for a link, it loads instinctively page "index.html". In this index.php, the parameters of the request are recovered via the header (you can look in "phpInfo" there is a field $ _SERVER [ 'REQUEST_URI'] which corresponds to this information).Then these parameters are interpreted , between the first two "/" is the name of the module, between the two others, the function name. Now Postnuke know the name of the module and function to launch.
You can pass parameters too, for instance, if you want to load a forum with id=2, the links will look like this
URL rewriting without mod rewrite
index.php/Forum/viewforum/forum:2
Note that the url rewriting uses ":" to represent the parameters in a url. So you can't pass variables like this "index.php?variable=filter:3". (be carefull if you are using Pagesetter and his filters system).
URL rewriting with mod rewrite
Optimizing the previous version
In the previous example, all links contained index.php ... but it's ugly, and functionally this file contains no
information useful to load the asked module.This trick is useful when you have no mod rewrite, but if one has an "mod rewrite enabled" server,you can use a "lighter" version of the previous rewriting without an "index.html"
Here is an example
URL rewriting with mod rewrite :Optimizing the previous version
/Users/logout
Be careful, if one of your pictures is written this way
and you load the page /MyModule/main/. "/MyModule/main/test.png" which will be searched. Note that you can make a rewriting that redirect all links of the form "/*/*/*.(jpg | png | gif)" to "$ 3. (Jpg | png | gif)." (but it's ugly).
Mode file
This url rewriting is the classical version already used in previous versions of the cms, The rewrited links are lists of words (module name, the name of function) separated by dashes. Note that this version uses a large number of regular expressions rules to do the rewriting compared to the other one, which may increase the load of your server Web.
One example here ...
URL rewriting with mod rewrite : Mode file
module-Forum-viewtopic-topic-2903-start-0.html
Note that the "module" which one would have thought there's no point in it, is made for the support of the "old style" loading of modules.
URL rewriting customized
So here is the coolest feature, which allows you to customize the URL rewriting depending on the module you want to load. Just create a "encodeurl" function in your API module (pnuserapi) that takes as parameters, the information needed to create for output a fully customized rewrited link.
After, the loading of each page of the CMS, a "decodeurl" function in the API part of the module takes care to reformat the encoded url in a form understandable by the CMS.
You can find an example of the use of this method in the module "Pages" of values addons
Format of a encode and decode url
function pages_userapi_encodeurl($args)
function pages_userapi_decodeurl($args)
This feature is interesting because it allows us to have the hands on your url, not only before loading the page, but after loading this page, allowing you post-processing actions rather interessant.
This method allow you to
- put keywords in the url: (see Pages module)
- have a single version of your rewrited url : Indeed, through the post treatment you can recalculate the url and it does not conform to your requirements, you can redirect to the good link via a redirect 301 "Moved Permanently headers.
Use case of a url rewriting "no duplicate"
Notes: A small problem nevertheless for the use of this rewriting, which is limited to the type url "user". (more details here)
This article is a translation from this "how to" released on Postnuke-France
Generated on February 25, 2008.