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I have a dedicated server with many different sub-folders/accounts. I have a test-installation for a new Joomla 2.5 site on one of these accounts/sub-folders that doesn't have a domain name associated with it yet. I have to access it by 

http://(SERVER-IP)/~subfolder/

rather than 

http://www.example.com/

Most of my link types are working smoothly (ie, "Single Article" links to the correct article alias, etc.) however when I use an External URL menu item type to link to an internal article alias, things go bad... Within the Menu Item options I put "/contact-us" in the Link field so that (in theory) I can link to 

http://(SERVER-IP)/~subfolder/index.php/contact-us

however it is removing the subfolder, causing it to link to the apache root of the dedicated server instead, resulting in: 

http://(SERVER-IP)/contact-us

I only have this issue when I use IP addresses instead of a domain name...

I have URL re-writing OFF, so it is not the .htaccess file causing the problems...is there an issue with the defined Absolute Path? Any ideas on how I can get this fixed so I can stop seeing 404-errors while in development? Thanks for any and all help pointing me in the right direction!

nhartsog
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1 Answers1

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The beginning forward slash means start at document root, so it basically says to strip all "folders" down to the root domain (which on your dev system means just the IP address).

One option is to use the base tag to set up relative links for the external url menu type. You could add this to your template file's index.php just after the <head> declaration:

<base href="<?php echo JURI::root(); ?>" />

This can introduce a host of issues with relative links though, so you may want to weigh the issues with that here: Is it recommended to use the <base> html tag?

The second option would be to try it with index.php at the start, so make the url index.php/contact-us. I believe that this will be routed properly as an internal link.

This will cause an issue if you go live and turn on htaccess URL rewriting. I just checked and this will not have the index.php section removed, so that is an issue.

The third option (which takes more work but is probably recommended) is to stop linking to internal urls with external url menu items. Joomla tends to function best when you set up a menu item for your urls. (Much of the url routing is based around the menu item.)

Really the third option is that it may be easier to help you not use the External URL menu item than to fix the routing issue.

Community
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David Fritsch
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  • Thank you David! I feel like, for my situation, the second option works beautifully and I am keeping a list of links using the "index.php" method to change back once the site goes live. It's a small site so there are only a small handful of them. The only reason I am hesitant to use a new "Single Article" menu item for each link that I am making is that some of these pages are going to be the same, and that would create two different URLs, causing possible duplicate content issues. – nhartsog Jul 30 '13 at 14:15
  • There is also a menu alias option if you want to point several menu items to the same place and link them. That sounds like it could apply to this situation. Also, if this answers your question, be sure to accept the post by clicking the error to the left of my answer. – David Fritsch Jul 30 '13 at 19:02