I am building a new website in Joomla 3 and here is some really weird behavior i just stumbled over…
I get a wrong URL in Menu Items and read more links, saying, e.g
website.de/weOffer/drinks/Read%20Private%20Message/beer.
I would give you a real URL, but the project is still under development and classified. The /Read%20Private%20Message/ part in the URL obviously does not belong there and gets inserted by joomla by default. The result of course is fatal. Not only the menu items aren't working, the read more links aren't either, all leading to 404 errors !
To go into more detail, here is what i have set up and what i have found out so far.
I have made a category blog, where articles are listed, each with a read more link in it, which works as expected.
Now each full text article should have its own slideshow and a couple of other modules, like a facts box in it. Thats why, the article itself must show up as a menu item as well, so in the module manager i can select, that a specific slideshow module is used in this specific article only. Therefore i have created menu items with the type of single article that links to the defined Article.
The main menu represents the page tree, each category blog has links to single articles as children. Some cat blog have cat blogs as children and then articles.
This setup works as expected, as long as i don't set the article menu item as a child of the category blog of the category the article itself belongs to. Example: MENU = we offer(catblog) -> drinks(catblog) -> beer(singlearticle) ARTICLEMANAGER beer(category: drinks) RESULT: wrong URL as above.
I can fix the error, by using rebuild in the menu manager, but thats only half way done. The menu URL is getting fixed, but than i have to go into the article itself, remove the read more and insert it back again, because the read private message doesnt get removed, even when i clear my cache. When i am done re-saving the readmore link, everything works like normal, until i save the article menu item the next time. Read Private Message bug is back again, up for another round.
I am a SuperUser, so i suspect i have all rights possible in joomla...
This must have something to do with Search engine friendly URLS (SEF), since it only occurs when i have SEF and mod rewrite turned on. I am using the default .htaccess file without any changes.
Here are some people with a similar problem, but no satisfying solution is given:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=802045 http://www.jevents.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=19620
I have read about migration and update errors, leading to the same problem.
I migrated manually (sql backup, change of some path in config file) from local apache to 1&1 apache server, both running PHP 5.4, so i doubt that this is a migration issue Plus the problem also appears when i create new articles and menu items (under the parent category).
Changing aliases in both menu items and article itself does not have any effect.
I really hope somebody could give me a hint, or maybe even just confirm that this is a bug If this is designed behavior than whats the reason for it ?.
I am quite frustrated about it and i don't have that many options left since: 1. SEF is a MUST (to my client) 2. Changing the menu tree structure, so that the linked items are no longer children of their cat block parent destroys my breadcrumbs. 3. rebuild and change every menu item and article manually 2 to 3 times is time consuming, error prone, annoying and i don#t want to sell a product to a client like this, since they want to maintain it for themselves as far as posiible.
Your help is really appreciated !
Greets paad.