[DeEtte]

We have a main “Faculty Profile” area using the card template (https://www.education.purdue.edu/faculty-profiles/) I want to also list certain faculty members on other pages depending on which category they are in (such as https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/geri-directory/). The problem is that when a user clicks on any of the categories or the person’s name they are not taken to the right place. How can I fix it so that they are directed to the correct area.

P.s. I am fine with needing to hide the categories if necessary but at the very least I need users to be able to click on the person’s name and get to the correct profile.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Garrett

If I understand, you want the link of the user to change depending on which category they are assigned? And certain category links to go to specific pages? That’s not really possible.

Links for a page will resolve to the page it is on. The widgets will resolve to the page defined as the directory home page.

There’s really only one option available that comes close, it is the home_id shortcode option using this shortcode option you can tell Connections to redefine which page the links within the current page should resolve to. The widgets will remains unaffected, they will always resolve to the page set as the directory home page.

Not sure if this is helpful, but I hope it is, let me know.

[DeEtte]

@Steven

Thank you for the quick response. I’m not sure that I explained correctly so let me give it another shot, it may be a bit long, sorry for that.

I have set the directory homepage as (https://www.education.purdue.edu/faculty-profiles/). I have all profiles and categories listed here, it is the master list.

Then I am wanting to add certain category listings to other pages. For example, I want to list people in the GERI category on this page (https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/geri-directory/). To do this I used [connections category=43 show_alphaindex='FALSE'].

Doing this works in that it shows me only the people in the GERI category, perfect! The problem is that clicking on one of the people on that page (the GERI one) does not take them to the correct page.

1. Go to https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/geri-directory/
2. Click on “Marcia Gentry”
3. Instead of going to https://www.education.purdue.edu/faculty-profiles/name/marcia-gentry/ it goes to https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/geri-directory/name/marcia-gentry/ which is just not really correct.

Is there a way to make it go to the correct “homepage” default listing of this person?

Does this make sense?

Thank you for your help Steven!

[DeEtte]

@Steven

I actually just reread your first response. I figured it out! Thank you so much Steven!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Garrett

Now I understand, the home_id shortcode option is what you want to use on the GERI page. Sounds like you figured that out.

Glad to help!

[DeEtte]

@steven

Hello again!
It has been brought to my attention that there is still an underlying issue with how I have my system set up. I hope I can explain this in a logical way.

If I am on the “GERI Directory” page (https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/geri-directory/) and click on one of the four names, such as “Marcia Gentry” it takes me to her profile page correctly (https://www.education.purdue.edu/faculty-profiles/name/marcia-gentry/) that is perfect.

The issue is that when someone Googles one of our faculty members, let’s say the Google “blake allan purdue” the second link goes to the GERI Directory (https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/geri-directory/name/blake-allan/) instead of the main faculty directory and there is no showing of the main one.

My question is, is there any way to make the Connections system not create these “hidden unneeded pages”? I’m sure I could set up multiple systems such as no-index and redirects but would really like to be able to do something in the actual Connections system to prevent this from happening. As it stands currently I can type “https://www.education.purdue.edu/geri/geri-directory/name/%5Bany faculty name]” and get a page that make it look like they are part of GERI which they are not.

Thank you for all of your help on this Steven, I do truly love this system. I’m just trying to do weird things with it I believe!

All the best,
Garrett

[Steven Zahm]

@ Garrett

I suspect when Google index the “GERI Directory” page blake allan purdue was on it. Now that is not, Google will update its index. Sometimes it can take a little time. I do believe if the Google Webmaster Tools Console you can request Google to recrawl a page sooner, but that is still at their discretion.

What is the exact shortcode you are using?

[DeEtte]

I was doing some work to look at if redirects were going to be possible so you may wish to do your testing with “/marcia-gentry/” to get an accurate representation of the issue I have described instead.

Currently I am using:
[connections category=43 show_alphaindex='FALSE' home_id=3484]
on the GERI Directory page.

[Steven Zahm]

@ Garrett

Ok, when the query is for a single entry, the category option is ignored. This is done to basically support all the weird ways Connections has been set up. So there is not a way to trigger a 404 or similar if direct typing an entry slug to a page which will parse the Connections data via the shortcode.

Currently the only way a 404 can be triggered is if the entry does not exists at all. Perhaps this could be extended to check if the entry is within the defined category. The difficulty here is that the page content would have to be read before it exists. The shortcode exists in the page content and a 404 has to be triggered before fetching the page content. If I did come up with a solution, this very well could break many other sites which rely on the way it currently works.

Like I said, it was likely, by chance, Google indexed the geri directory while blake was on it. Perhaps while you were setting it up. When Google re-indexes the page, that should self correct. Let me know if it does not.

[DeEtte]

Great, thank you Steven. I think I am going to do a little work inside Google to force it to remove some of these entries and see if that helps as well.

Thank you for your help!

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