hello,
I have a problem with my what's new module url. Some posts have the url like this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/http://www.../1638.aspx

is it a known issue?

thanks

This might be related to how my MessageLink token is rendered from my AS install, which is exactly as this link is shown, while all other links are correct. Will has mentioned this is a dnn5.6 issue and should corrected in 5.6.1 ..

No, this is not a 5.6 issue and it is not entirely related. Similar symptom, but not the same issue. The issue you have messaging links is related to multiple portal aliases and Active Social site url as I've mentioned before.


Sh@wn,
I notice that URL is being rewritten outside of Active Forums. That isn't our standard format URL. Usually when we see urls with duplicate host names it means that you have portal aliases in a mixed case. Meaning, MySite.com instead of mysite.com. As I mentioned, the URL that you posted is not generated by Active Forums, its coming from DotNetNuke. DotNetNuke doesn't think the host name is present so it adds it back again, usually because it is using a case-sensitive compare. Log into your site as host, go the sql page and enter:



You want to make sure all the portal aliases are lower case. If they are, then your next step would be to talk with the vendor of the URL rewriter.

Hi Will, i realize you feel this issue of MessageLink is solved, but you have also told me it is a 5.6.0 issue and now you say it is not. Let me ask you one more time, and please, help me and others understand: why is it ONLY MessageLink that screws up? Shouldn't every link be generating the base location to my AS install in the exact same fashion? If i am right, then all links should either be correct or not. This is what keep bothering me as i explain to my clients over and over about the incorrect link. I further suggest this is not the correct answer because the incorrect url does NOT contain any of the text from the 1 extra portal alias i have left (after removing the others, and having dnn auto-insert this /portal/0 alias).

I am not trying to be hard-to-deal-with, i am only looking to understand, thank you for allowing me to ask. drew..

Drew,
The 5.6.0 is about the additional bogus portal aliases being created automatically. That is what I said was an issue in 5.6.0 that would be resolved in 5.6.1. Again, this also has nothing to do with the message link.

You had a couple different domains pointing to your site. You were also using multiple portal aliases. Have you removed the other aliases so that the only remaining alias matches what you have provided in the site URL? I'm not talking about the bogus entries dnn created, I'm talking about the host name. The host names in the portal alias area need to match what you have in place for the site url.

As for why it needs to be this way...Messages are sent as part of background process outside of the httpcontext. DotNetNuke generates URLs based the httpcontext of the current request. When the httpcontext is not available, DotNetNuke may return an incorrect the url. In some cases it will return the first portal alias in list and other times it might not return one at all. Since we have been building web apps for many years we know what is going on and how to fix it when the problem occurs. In order to handle it properly we need to have a certain configuration in place: site url and matching portal aliases. This actually works well, because it encourages a better site setup overall. First, multiple urls pointing to the same content is bad SEO. Multiple domains can make it even worse. Another problem that our setup helps avoid is links and authentication. If I create a message at "http://yourdomain.com/" but the user is logged into "http://www.yourdomain.com" the user will be automatically logged out when they access the link. The is true with journal entries. The requirement for having a site url match your portal aliases is for the benefit of your entire site, not something we just made up and decided to enforce.

Thank you Will, i very much appreciate this information, but again, my question is not being answered: why all links being correct but MessageLink incorrect. This is at the heart of my frustration here. So i will bow to your years of experience with the nuances of DNN, i have no troubles with that as clearly you are more seasoned than i in this regard, no troubles. But what you said here finally tweaked my realization that you and dnn do not feel that http://mydomain.com and http://www.domain.com to be the same domain. This flies in the face of all that i know of the net as we encourage users to just skip the www if they want to when entering a domain. THUS.. my portal address was NOT matching my site url even though i thought it was, THUS my MessageLink is being properly set. This was the culprit. Too bad this was not clearly explained a month ago, we could have avoided all this, and a blurb in the setup clearly stating this would help other foolish ones like myself who don't understand all of DNN's nuances from wasting so much time and energy on what is quite a trivial solution.

thank frig'n god that is over.

I have removed all "extra" portal aliases and I am still getting the erroneous links in the What's New module.

Any other thoughts?

the site url matches the portal alias.

Are you using any kind of URL re-writer other than the DotNetNuke default. Also, check the portal aliases table and make sure they are all lower case.

I have upgraded to DNN 5.6.1 and Im still getting the URL double up. Something else strangehas also started happening.

The Forum Vanity URL redirects to a completely different page. If I click the Forum Topic for General Discussion with vanity name "general" the URL should be http://www.domain.com/Forums/general however it is redirecting to the Active Social Groups page.

Any clue what would be causing this ? I have URL Master module installed by not using it yet.

The forum links redirecting to the Groups page was fixed by adding runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" to the web.config.

Im left with the same conditions & issue as FatGeorge.

Im using URL Master also.
Ben

It is not portal aliases, I have the same problem and the portal aliases are all in lower cases. I noticed that the broken link shows for old posts if vanity is turned on and all the new posts links are fine.

If the a script for those that wish to create vanity urls for topics created prior to Active Forums 4.3 is released, that will fix the problem for the "whats new module" url.

MJ, my tests also conclude that the issue only exists for pre-4.3 posts also.

We really need that upgrade script for 4.3 before vanity URL's can be turned on.

I have upgraded to AF 4.3.4 and now it's all ok.