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Stanford Sites User Guide

Manage Page Paths

The path is the part of the URL that comes after the domain name. 

So for example, the link to our syllabus for intro to Stanford Sites can be found at:

https://sitesuserguide.stanford.edu/support/introduction-stanford-sites-syllabus

In this example 

https://sitesuserguide.stanford.edu/ is the domain name.

/support/introduction-stanford-sites-syllabus is the path. 

introduction-stanford-sites-syllabus is the alias. In some systems this is also sometimes called the slug.

Automatic paths

Stanford Sites automatically creates several elements:

  • Each page gets a path with a unique number. It it looks like /node/66. This cannot be changed and is used as a unique ID to help maintain links.
  • Each page also gets an path that consists of an alias based on the title of the page. An alias is a more friendly, readable name. Each page may have only one alias.
  • Each page gets an path that consists of the alias preceded by other elements that give additional information about your site hierarchy and organization. The rules governing those paths are listed below.

Basic Page and Policy paths

For Basic Page and Policy, the path is calculated by using the page title and the menu path. For example, a page called "About" at the top level of the main menu, would get this alias /about. If another page was made called "Our Team", and that page was nested below the "About" page, the generated path would be /about/our-team.

Updates to a page title or page menu location automatically result in an update to the alias. The old alias is then converted into a redirect. If, for example, the "Our Team" page was moved into the top level of the menu, the new alias would be /our-team. If a user went to /about/our-team, they would be redirected to /our-team.

Automatic aliases for news, events and other structured content

Structured content also gets an automatic alias following these patterns (where page-title would be created from the title of the page:

  • News: /news/page-title
  • Events: /events/page-title
  • Person: /people/page-title
  • Event Series: /events/series/page-title
  • Publication: /publications/page-title

Adjusting the path for an individual page

You can customize URL alias for Basic Page if you do not wish to use what is created automatically.

  • Near the bottom of the edit form for the page, find the section called URL Alias.
  • Uncheck the box for Generate automatic URL alias.
  • Enter your desired path in the URL alias field.
  • Save your page.

 

Frequently asked questions about paths

Stanford Sites will append a number at the end of your path when the auto-generated path for your page is the same as a page that already exists. 

For example if, if you were trying to make a page with the title "About", and you see that the URL is https://sitename.stanford.edu/about-0, you already had a page at https://sitename.stanford.edu/about.

There are several ways to address this issue.  

  • If the older /about page is no longer needed you can uncheck the box to automatically create the page path on the older page, and update the path manually to something like /about-old. Once that is done, you can go to the newer page  (/about-0) and re-save it to generate a clean path for your new page.
  • If you wish to keep the older page because it is a valid page, give both pages a more distinctive title. This will not only solve the path issue, it will also improve on-site search results.

Stanford Sites puts your recently deleted pages into a holding area for 30 days. This is to allow us to recover your work, if needed. If you need us to permanently delete the page, please file a help ticket.

If you see a page path like /path/path/path/path, this is because you have nested a menu item inside of itself. To fix this, you can change your menu structure so that this is no longer the case.   After you fix your navigation, you can resave the page to generate a clean path.

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