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Has anyone played with the new redirect feature in Ektron 8.6?

We tested it (in 8.6.0) before upgrading and were happy with it. But when it came time to do the upgrade, Ektron had released 8.6.1, so we upgraded directly to that. Now we are having trouble with the redirect feature. (Yes, we should have tested everything again in 8.6.1 before upgrading)

Now if we try to add a redirect rule for an existing page in the CMS, it does not work. But if we create a redirect rule for a page the does not exist, then try to hit that address, the redirect works fine. We need the redirects to work for existing pages in the CMS.

To clarify what "working" and "not working" means...

If I have an existing page in the CMS with manual alias of "/erc/lucien.apsx", I can create an entry in the redirect table like this... enter image description here

Adding this entry generates no errors, but when I visit the page, all I see is the regular old page I created. NOT the Google site it should be redirecting to. I do not get any 404 errors.

But if I create a redirect entry for a page that does not already exist, like this... enter image description here

It works perfectly. If I try to visit the /erc/fake.apsx address, I end up on the Google site, as expected.

(FYI, we create a "fake" page in the CMS for external content so we can attach metadata to it and make it searchable in taxonomies, but then provide a link to the "real" page. I want to use redirects here so users don't have to do this extra click)

nedlud
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  • Can you provide sample configurations, screenshots, etc? What exactly have you tried? Do you get any error messages? Does it allow you to save the redirect? What happens when "it does not work?" – egandalf Feb 27 '13 at 13:27
  • Also, check the event viewer for messages that may be logged but not displayed on the page. – Bill Feb 27 '13 at 16:55
  • Also, would be good to know what 'does not work' means. 404? Exception? When you add a rule for an “existing page in the CMS” does that mean an alias? Or direct quicklink? Or other physical aspx template? – Bill Feb 27 '13 at 17:05
  • Good questions. I'll update my original post.. – nedlud Feb 28 '13 at 22:07
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    At this point, I'm assuming this is some kind of bug. From our testing it appears that in the change from 8.5 to 8.6.1, some rules were changed in how Ektron handles aliases. Specifically, it seems to no longer permit two aliases to be the same (eg, manual and automatic aliases being the same). Since the redirects appear to be treated like aliases (living in the same db table perhaps?), it won't permit a redirect on anything that already has an alias. – nedlud Mar 13 '13 at 22:42
  • FYI, this issue of no two aliases being the same appears to have been an issue in our recent upgrade when duplicate aliases were silently deleted. Of course there was no warning about this, and no log of what happened, but now that the users complaints are rolling in, we see the extent of the problem. – nedlud Mar 13 '13 at 22:43

2 Answers2

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I suspect it might be cache related -- the original URL gets cached as an alias, then subsequent requests to that URL are redirected to the quicklink without the need for a db look up. When you add the redirect, it’s probably not clearing the old item from the cache. I'd try an IIS reset after you add the URL redirect and see if that clears up the issue.

Bill
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An "outside the box" (of Ektron) answer to this is to place the redirect at the web server rather than in the Aliases section of the Ektron CMS.

The server I work on uses IIS and I have this set up for several pages.

RacerNerd
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