Internal links not always updating
Hi,
We have an issue that internal links are not always updating. We've doing a significant update to one of our large sites. Someone is going through the pages to update and re-organize them. We have also bulk-changed them to switch into a new content type.
Here's an example of a problem:
We have this page on the published site: http://lts.brandeis.edu/research/borrowing/
The text "Using other libraries" links to this page: http://lts.brandeis.edu/research/borrowing/elsewhere/index.html
The link works fine there (it's an internal link to the page.
We have then done some reorganization of the site including moving the "borrowing" folder that contains these two pages up one level.
In the CMS the borrowing folder live in /sub-domains/lts/research/borrowing/ and elsewhere was a folder within. The borrowing folder was moved so it now lives at /sub-domains/lts/borrowing/ (and elsewhere still lives within it).
For some reason after this change the internal links didn't update. If I go to the index page and click the link it will give me a 404: The requested resource (/sub-domains/lts/research/borrowing/elsewhere/index) is not available.
Going to the borrowing index page and looking at the HTML it
looks correct for an internal link:
Why didn't this link update?
I just tried moving something else and links did update correctly, so I'm not sure what causes some links to update and others not? Am I missing something obvious? Is there a bug? The issue with broken internal links seems pretty widespread throughout this fairly large website. Will editors need to go through thousands of pages to fix all the links? I can't think of an automated way of doing so nor why it happened -- or if it will happen again!
Cascade Server v6.8.3.1
Thanks,
Ian
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1 Posted by irifkin on 15 May, 2012 09:20 PM
Hi again,
If we move the borrowing folder back within research it does fix the internal link. But moving it back up a level again re-breaks it. Is there something about how certain links are written? I assume the links were just created within the WYSIWYG editor.
Thanks,
Ian
Support Staff 2 Posted by Tim on 16 May, 2012 02:50 PM
Hi Ian,
For a Page with bad links on it - what happens if you edit/submit it? It sounds like these Pages that aren't having their links updated may not have ever had these links managed by Cascade (potentially caused by a legacy bug).
3 Posted by irifkin on 16 May, 2012 03:00 PM
Hi Tim,
Good question. Actually when you edit/submit the page it correctly tells you the links are broken. So, it sounds like Cascade knows they are internal links and knows when they're working or not -- but won't update them for some unknown reason.
See attached screenshot.
Ian
Support Staff 4 Posted by Tim on 16 May, 2012 03:41 PM
Ian,
Thanks for that info. Please bear with us as we try to understand this situation a little bit better. From what I can tell, it seems as though both the Folder and the Page you were linking to were moved when the borrowing Folder was moved outside of research. Is that correct? If so, was the Page moved back to the research Folder afterwards?
5 Posted by irifkin on 16 May, 2012 03:43 PM
Hi Tim,
The borrowing/ folder and everything within it was moved up one level in the tree. That's all.
It did move pages because they were contained in it, but we did not move pages separately, in this example. Does that make sense?
Ian
Support Staff 6 Posted by Tim on 16 May, 2012 04:43 PM
Thanks Ian. I set up a little test locally that mimics your Folder structure and it looks like I was able to reproduce this. Let me show it to a developer to get their take on it.
I'll get back to you once I hear back from them.
Support Staff 7 Posted by Tim on 16 May, 2012 05:05 PM
Ian,
I think I may have spoken too soon. There's actually something we'd like to verify on your side first. The issue I've noticed is actually with a Copy operation not updating links. When I set up a Folder structure to mimic yours locally, moving the 'borrowing' Folder did correctly update the links.
Here is what we would like for you to do when you have the chance:
This way we should be able to determine whether or not the link was being tracked.
8 Posted by irifkin on 16 May, 2012 05:55 PM
Hi Tim,
Ah, yes, I'm aware of copying folders and confusion with links. I could discuss that sometime, but this is different.
Yes, actually -- Doing those steps causes the link to update correctly after the folder move.
Ian
Support Staff 9 Posted by Tim on 16 May, 2012 06:43 PM
Thanks for the update, Ian. The fact that the link is updated correctly after those steps confirms that the link was not being tracked prior to that. As to how this could happen - I'm not sure. I haven't been able to come up with a scenario where links are not tracked, so it's possible that we're dealing with a legacy issue. Do you have an estimate of approximately how many Pages might be affected by this? The only way I can think of to go about fixing these would be to write a Web Services script which would perform Edits on those Pages.
10 Posted by irifkin on 16 May, 2012 06:54 PM
Hi Tim,
The page in question in the example scenario was created in 2008, so it's not surprising that there can be a "legacy" issue. That said, the page was edited since then. Looking at the version history the borrowing/index page was edited on May 13, 2012 and a bunch of times in April 2012.
Regarding scope, I'm not sure. I think we'll need to publish the whole site and see what the report says. We published 2 not-very-big sections and there are about 50 instances of broken links. Potentially a fairly widespread problem in the site.
I'm not sure if your idea of using Web services would work. Would the folders/pages need to be in their original positions? There's been a lot of cleanup to the site and the Web editors didn't necessarily keep track of every folder and page move that they did. As mentioned in my previous ticket, we tried creating a copy of the site but it only copied a few pages then crashed Cascade -- I mention that because it would be difficult to start over even if we were willing to do so.
What do you suggest?
Ian
Support Staff 11 Posted by Tim on 24 May, 2012 08:47 PM
Hi Ian,
Just checking in on this one to see if you happen to have published the site yet (to check for the number of broken links).
Also, my developer noticed that I spoke incorrectly earlier when I mentioned that the Web Services could could fix the broken links. This is not necessarily the case. It would make all of the links that were already valid be tracked by Cascade (whereas some of them that are valid now are not tracked, potentially due to legacy issues).
Tim closed this discussion on 04 Apr, 2013 02:34 PM.