As Ben pointed out yesterday, my love of substitution rules picked up off Mark in order to give lovely short urls to my website, meant that the comments section of blogsphere broke (not blogspheres fault), but I still love them so here’s a lightning fast guide to using them, and how not to suck at it
So here we have a basic use of substitution rules, the first line means that when you go to the root of the site, it redirects to your nsf (so you don’t have to stipulate it in the site config), also the path and .nsf don’t appear in your urls, the next 2 lines are in there are in there so that the preview and insert quick images from blogsphere work as it seemed to need them or it would not display properly (shrug, I know its poor of me and I know I should fix any issues I might have and pass them straight back, if they prove to be genuine bugs rather than me being a twit).
So next we have a problem that the code REALLY wants to connect to the actual path of the server i.e. www.test.com/apps/blog.nsf, and the first line is redirecting everything to root, ah! you think, ill just put a substitution rule in so that when we just ignore that specific URL, see the extra line below.
but dang it!!!, it does not work and the server console says “/apps/blog.nsf/apps/blog.nsf/basic?openform cant find design note”, this is because i have forgotten to read the flippin manual!!, as the domino admin guide states
“The incoming and replacement patterns in substitution rules must each specify at least one wildcard. If you do not explicitly include a wildcard somewhere in a pattern, the HTTP task automatically appends “/*” to the pattern when it stores the rule in its internal table. “
Soooo, just bung the “/*” on the end of you “/” rule, and hey presto it works
those quicker than me on the uptake will have realised that we can use substitution rules to move things like images and other resources out of a database with out having to go thought all that boring recoding e.g.
oh, after each change to make your substitution rules take effect straight away do “tell http refresh” on the server console
hope that helps
Oh, yes i know i put this up on a Wednesday but i will at the London Lotus Beer tomorrow night, so doubt i will be in a fit state to blog later
Old Comments
Randal Oulton(27/02/2011 01:10:59 GMT)
Okay I did a fudge on the home page for now with a meta refresh (ugh); and got google site search working again.
Well worth the effort, lovely short beautiful URLs that search engines will love.
Have a look, { Link }
Mark Myers(05/03/2011 19:02:57 GMT)
hi hi Randal,
thanks for the feedback, could you tell me what else it breaks
personally i don’t use default website document in websites i write (feels like hard coding) that’s why i have the rule pointing to “/” and deal with it at a design level
I have not used goggle search on website as I happily have domino FT, but agree that the urls should cater too it
Randal Oulton(26/02/2011 15:57:59 GMT)
Hey Mark,
this breaks a lot of things, like default home page in the web site document, google site search, etc.
I’m currently trying to figure out workarounds; if / when I come up with any, I’ll report back to save other people going “ack!!!”