Shortcuts (a.k.a. virtual paths)
If you wish to publish the address of a specific page with your web site, or give it to somebody over the phone, then the normal addresses that the system uses to reach each page can be rather awkward and unfriendly to use. The shortcuts feature of the CMS system offers a solution to this problem by allowing you to create easy alternative addresses for specific pages.
To set up a shortcut:
- From the 'Page Functions' section of the main menu choose "Shortcuts".
- Click on the "New Entry" link.
- Choose the website that the new shortcut relates to from the drop-down list. Different websites can have the same shortcut.
- In the "Virtual Path" field enter the friendly name you wish to use. This must not be a name you have used before and it must not contain spaces.
- From the "Real Page" drop down list, select the page that the user will see when they enter this friendly name.
- Press the "Submit" button.
The shortcut is now set up. If the name you entered was "news" then an address such as "www.yourname.co.uk/news" can be entered to go to the selected page.
By selecting "Shortcut Hits" from the main menu you can see a report of how many times the friendly names have been used by visitors. If you only use the friendly name on a certain type of advertising, it will tell you how effective the advertising is.
Note: The following names are not allowed as they are already used by the CMS system:
- admin
- cmsapps
- content
- css
- images
- inc
- include
- lib
- sysimages
- systhumbs
- templates