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By nmadhukar on
Hi,
We are running a new site www.diggandhra.com built on drigg module. Now the issues is that we have not enabled the pathauto module at the beginning of the project and have made lots of data updates.
We have released that we want to enable pathauto module now, so we can use some of the other modules for generic rules. For example configuring lightbox2 with wildcard selections.
Can someone please advise me on the below.
1. What are the risks of enabling pathauto in the middle (i mean not from beginning)
2. Will it cause any issues to the already entered data into the site.
3. Any suggestions on things to check around before enabling pathauto at this stage.
4. What will pathauto do to the past data that is already entered. How do we convert the past data into pathauto specific url (i.e rename node etc).
Regards
Madhukar
Comments
HEllo Madhukar,
HEllo Madhukar,
Pathauto is a beautiful module. I use it on every site that has large content.
Your main concerns are 4. Let me answer all.
1- Doing so in middle has no additional risks. Enabling Pathauto has risks that remain same if you enable it in middle or start but those risks are SEO realted. Ill tell you at end of this post.
2- What will it do to past content.
It wont do anything by itself, however if you it want to generate aliases for past content, you can do so by checking "Bulk generate aliases for nodes that are not aliased" checkbox under Administer >URL Aliases > Automatic Alias Settings
By default it would generate 50 aliases each time you check the checkbox and press save. So lets say you have 200 past nodes, then you will have to repeat the step 4 times as 50x4=200
Also please note that do not change default setting of geenrating 50 aliases per turn to a very very high value. upto 100-200 is ok usually.
3- Things to check will be like deciding what alias pattern would be good for your site. Do not change the auto alias generation pattern a lot.
Suppose today you have set pattern to be /[node-type]/[title] for all articles today and as a result you got following aliases generated
article/abc
article/xyz
article/lmn
And then after a week you change the pattern, delete old aliases and regenerate with new pattern /[title]
So you get
/abc
/xyz
/lmn
And now think if during that week search engines had indexed your pages so when you change the url aliases, clicks coming from search engine would go to old alias but they wil result in "Page not found" / broken links. So keep that in mind.
Take your time, Decide and keep on your decision.
4- Point 3 has answer to this.
Special Note:
The SEO related risks associated with this module is that you will have two paths to same content/node so this might harm you as duplicate content case in search engines. Whenever you use pathauto, do use Global Redirect module as well. It makes sure that when request comes for a node, it allows just one path to reach that node and redirects all other duplicate paths to that specific node to that one path.
I am using this combination extensively on my sites.
Abdullah,
Information Planet
Oil Cups
Thank you
Thank you so much abdullah. It really helps me to know these things. However, I have one final question, is there anyway of enabling pathautho without hurtin the SEO rankings at this point? Appreciate if you can clear this one for me.
Regards
Madhukar