Aliases and redirects

Aliases

An alias is the URL assigned to a node (page).

When you first save a draft, the page title is used for the alias (with short words like ‘the’ and ‘and’ removed).

If you change a page's title, you should edit the alias to match.

Never add an alias as you will split the analytics.

When to use aliases

When you change a page's title, you should manually edit the alias to match it, for good SEO.

When we do this, all internal links (ie links on CMS pages; not external sites) to the node/page won’t get broken, because they link to the page's underlying node number.

Only edit an alias – don't delete it. If a page's main alias is deleted, it will display the node number in the URL on the live site and external links to the page will be broken.

How to edit an alias

Don't just click the Add alias button or you will end up with 2 working pages with different URLs. This confuses your analytics and users.

Important: Before you edit a page's alias, check if there are any redirects for the page.

To get to the screen where you can edit aliases:

• You can click on the Manage URL aliases link on the right side of the page's edit screen.
• You can also get to the aliases screen by rolling over Configuration, then on the dropdown menu roll over Search and metadata, then click on Aliases.

To edit an alias:

1. Type or paste the end bit of the URL into the field and click the Filter button.
2. Choose your page from the list below and click on the Edit button on the right.
3. You'll see 2 fields, the System path and the URL alias. Edit the alias field and click Save.
4. When you edit an alias, a redirect is automatically created.

Redirects from external sites to SDP pages

These are usually used when a site or page is migrated from another CMS to the SDP CMS. Redirects on external sites must be made by the administrator of that site.

Redirects from external sites must be made in the DNS (domain name system). Generally departmental digital teams will manage the DNS settings for all the domain names they own.

A spreadsheet should be prepared listing the old URLs and and the new URLs. Here are a couple of examples.

Most content will be migrated into a section on vic.gov.au. A few entities will have standalone websites.

This spreadsheet should be provided to the site administrator of the external site, to implement on the day of the site going live on SDP. It should also be provided to the SDP team for testing.

Redirects from and to pages in the CMS

We use redirects on pages within the CMS:

• when there's a need for a shorter version of the URL for use in advertising and social media
• when a page is archived

Note that when you change a page's title and edit its alias, a redirect is automatically created.

Create a redirect for a short URL

To add a redirect for a short URL:

1. Go to the redirects screen and click Add redirect. (To find this screen, roll over Configuration, then on the dropdown menu roll over Search and metadata, then click on URL redirects.)
2. All pages have a site code (e.g. vic.gov.au is site-4). You'll see it in a page's URL path when you're in the CMS.
3. In the Path field, type in the site code and the short URL you want to redirect from.
4. In the To field, start typing the page title and select your chosen destination page from the dropdown that appears.
5. Click Save and test it on the live site.

Example:

• From (Path): /site-507/covidsafe-summer (a short URL to use in advertising)
• To: /site-507/together-we-can-keep-our-summer-covidsafe (the node/page alias that matches the page title; the part after /site-507/ displays on the live URL).

Why not use an alias?

In the SDP CMS, you can create a short alias for a page with a longer URL. We prefer to use the redirect method rather than the alias method for a couple of reasons:

• With the alias method, when a user visits this link, the URL displayed in the browser will be the short one. For SEO reasons, we prefer the URL of our pages to match the full page title.
• Using an alias instead of a redirect will also split your Google Analytics results – you'll get 2 sets of numbers for the one page, which would give misleading traffic information.

Create a redirect for a page that's been archived

To add a redirect for an archived page:

1. Go to the redirects screen. (To find this screen, roll over Configuration, then on the dropdown menu roll over Search and metadata, then click on URL redirects.)
2. In the To field, search for the page's URL (eg /my-cool-page or site-1/my-cool-page) to look for redirects pointing to the page you've archived. If there are any, delete them.
3. Now click the Add redirect button.
4. All pages have a site code (e.g. vic.gov.au is site-4). You'll see it in a page's URL path when you're in the CMS.
5. In the Path field, type in the site code and the URL you want to redirect from. (Make sure there's no slash at the start in the field.)
6. In the To field, start typing the page title and select your chosen destination page from the dropdown that appears.
7. Click Save and test it on the live site.

Redirect troubleshooting

• A redirect won't work if the 'from' page is still live. Archive the page and check again.
• Try an incognito browser window as your browser's caching might load a page for you without getting it fresh from the web.
• Existing aliases and redirects may block your new redirect from working. Check what other aliases and redirects exist for the page before adding a redirect.
• If you're creating a redirect for a press release or marketing campaign make sure your page and redirect are live for at least 15 minutes before any promotion or launch. This will give time for any cache delay in the system.

1. Check for aliases

Open the CMS page in Edit mode. On the right side of the screen, open the URL alias section and you'll see the aliases that exist for that page.

In the example above, we can see that there are 2 aliases for the page – the original one that matches the page title and a shorter one that was added later.

If there is more than one alias for a page, setting up a redirect won't work. You'll need to go to the Aliases screen and delete the second one.

2. Delete ONLY additional aliases

Don't delete ALL aliases for a page; leave the original alias that gives the page its URL.

On the screenshot above:

• The alias under the English heading is the original page node alias.
• The alias under the Language neutral heading was added later. Just delete this second one if you're adding a redirect because you're archiving the page.

3. Check for existing redirects

Before adding any redirects, always check to see if any other redirects already exist for that page.

Open the CMS page in Edit mode. On the right side of the screen, open the URL redirects section and you'll see the redirects that exist for that page.

You can add, edit and delete redirects from here.

4. Archive the old CMS page

The From page must be archived for the redirect to work. (Only CMS users with site admin and approver permissions can archive pages. CMS users with edit permissions can set a page to 'archive pending' which will go to the publishing queue for actioning.)

5. Add the redirect

To add a redirect:

1. Go to the redirects screen and click Add redirect.
2. All pages have a site code (e.g. vic.gov.au is site-4). You'll see it in a page's path when you're in the CMS.
3. In the From field, type in the site code and the URL you want to redirect from.
4. In the To field, type in the site code with a starting slash and the URL of the destination page.

Examples:

• From '/site-4/coronavirus-contact' to '/site-507/coronavirus-contact' redirects the coronavirus contact page that used to be on the vic.gov.au website (site-4) to its new location on the coronavirus.vic.gov.au website (site-507). This means if anyone clicks www.vic.gov.aucoronavirus-contact they will be redirected to www.coronavirus.vic.gov.aucoronavirus-contact.
• From '/site-507/restrictions' to '/site-507/roadmap' when we changed a page title due to a change in terminology used.

Other tools for making short URLs

We have a tool for making short URLs but it does not have the same functionality as .bitly or other URL shortening tools which provide photo and video display on social media.

It is mainly used by people who want short URLs that have government branding for publications.

Facebook post display of title following a change of url/alias

It will take time following the change of a title and url/alias for Facebook to recognise the change. You can make the change display more quickly by using the Facebook sharing debugger.