Changing the URL of a page results in the URL of other pages being changed. HELP!

[braintrainnerd]

Hi all.

As Admin, if I click on a topic page, click on "Edit Page", click on "Save Page" without editing anything, then change the URL under the field "Save the page URL based on the page name", then click "OK" ("Overwrite template" is selected by default), the URLs of every other topic page in the category is changed to the same new URL.

Is this because I accidentally chose "Overwrite template"? I now have over a hundred pages with the same URL under "Save the page URL based on the page name". So when I post a link to any of these pages in Facebook, the thumbnail and link that Facebook sees are the always to the same URL under "Save the page URL based on the page name".

This means that over a hundred pages are pointing to a single page instead of the correct page.

If I manually edit all these pages, change the URL in "Save the page URL based on the page name" to the correct URL, and save again, but choose not to overwrite the template, will this fix the problem? If I do this, I have to manually create over a hundred new Template Names.

I don't know if this is a bug or not, if it is, it is a very serious one.

Thank you.

[braintrainnerd]

Ok, I changed a URL of a page, and chose not to overwrite the template, thereby creating a new template specific for this page (and gave it a specific template name). I then went into another different page, and the URL in "Save the page URL based on the page name" has reverted to the new URL! In fact, all pages in the same category have their URLs changed to the new URL!

There must be a bug whereby changing a URL causes all pages in the same category / subforum to revert to the new URL!

This means that when search engines index my pages, they will display the wrong URL in the search results. Also, when people post links to my pages elsewhere on the internet, the wrong URL will also be displayed. This will confuse anyone who sees the URL because the wording in URL will be completely different to the title of the pages.

[braintrainnerd]

This is messed up. Some google search results only show my homepage (domain) URL, instead of the proper URL that includes the page title. Other search results, show the URL that include wording that is completely different from the the correct page title.

How do I add a bug to the bug tracker?

[braintrainnerd]

The "Save the page URL based on the page name" appears to be a meta tag. When editing the the page, the correct URL is displayed in the URL bar of the web browser, but the "Save the page URL based on the page name" URL is different.

When posting the correct URL of a page into Facebook, or when google indexes the page, Facebook and google both look up the "Save the page URL based on the page name" info for that page, and they index this URL, instead of the correct URL.

[braintrainnerd]

This problem is serious enough to wreck a website.

Facebook links showing the wrong URL, google search results showing the wrong URL, links people share elsewhere showing the wrong URL.

It is unfixable on my end because changing the "Save the page URL based on the page name" for one pages causes the same URL to be propagated to all other pages.

My website is wrecked.

[braintrainnerd]

I believe that I may have now found a workable solution, which I am slowly implementing, and getting the desired results.

This Facebook Tool is quite useful to see how your page looks to FB, google etc.: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/?ref=u2u

Hopefully all the affected pages can be fixed without further issues!

[braintrainnerd]

It's no good. After a few minutes, all the fields ie. "Save the page name", "Save the page URL based on the page name", "Meta Description" and "Template Name" revert back to the values of a different page. The issue seems to affect pages with YouTube videos.

I've spent 8 hours on this today. Time to send a support ticket.

[Mark.B]

If you change the URL of a category, then everything below that changes with it. This is by design.
Also, vBulletin has no control over how Google indexes your site, though you can submit a site map to them if you wish which may help.

[braintrainnerd]

If you change the URL of a category, then everything below that changes with it. This is by design.

This is not an issue. It is logical and to be expected.

The issue is that once I change the details of a page ie. "Save the page name", "Save the page URL based on the page name", "Meta Description" and "Template Name", after a few minutes, those details change to something else. And then Facebook, Google and elsewhere indexes that page using the incorrect details (after the correct details were erroneously replaced).

If I have a page about how to repair refrigerators, and I change the URL of that page to to include 'how-to-repair-refrigerators', and the meta descrition to include 'handy tips and tricks on how to repair refrigerators', I don't want that URL to change to 'how-to-repair-bicycles' and the meta description change to 'handy tips and tricks on how to repair bicycles'. And then I don't want to google to show 'how-to-repair-bicycles' as the URL in the search results and 'handy tips and tricks on how to repair bicycles' in the description. The information that people are seeing is different from what the page is about. Who would click on a link about bicycles if they want information about refrigerators?

All of these values are specific to a page, so if they change, they no longer reflect the content of that page.

When I change the details of a page ie. "Save the page name", "Save the page URL based on the page name", "Meta Description" and "Template Name", why do these values change after a few minutes? What is the point of having an option to edit the details of a page, and then save, just to have the details change automatically and without my consent after a few minutes? Something is very wrong here.

[glennrocksvb]

You should not change the URL of a topic page as the URL is based off the topic title. If you like to change the topic URL, you should edit the topic title. Changing the topic URL in Sitebuilder has unexpected behavior as you had experience.

[braintrainnerd]

You should not change the URL of a topic page as the URL is based off the topic title. If you like to change the topic URL, you should edit the topic title. Changing the topic URL in Sitebuilder has unexpected behavior as you had experience.

Hi Glenn. Thanks for your reply.

To test, I changed the titles of 10 topics by adding the number 1 to the end of the existing titles. I refreshed those 10 pages, and the 1 does not show up in the URL bar at the top of the browser. The topic titles have changed, but the topic URLs remain unchanged.

For example:

Existing title: Hello World

New title: Hello Word 1

Refreshed URL: ..../forum/hello+world

Should the new URL be: .../forum/hello+world+1 ?

[glennrocksvb]

Try adding text not number.

[braintrainnerd]

Glenn Vergara No luck. Text or numbers, the URL remains unchanged.It may be because when I had previously altered the URL and other data for the pages, I saved the change as a new template, and that is causing problems.

If I want to delete the new templates that I created for the topic pages, how would I do it? How can I restore the pages back to the original default templates?

Thank you.

[Wayne Luke]

There are issues with changing Topic URLs at this time and it isn't recommended to do so. There are changes coming in vBulletin 5.4.4 that enhance the URL and Routing systems so they are more robust and should allow Topic URLs to be edited.