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URL Aliases

A URL alias is an alternate URL pattern that resolves to a Drupal entity, such as a node, media, taxonomy term, or user. For example, you could set "/welcome" as an alias for "/node/1". Aliases are part of Drupal Core and can be extended by contrib modules. One such module is Pathauto, which enables automatic alias generation based on patterns, and the patterns may involve "Tokens" (such as [node:title]).

This page will attempt to cover the Islandora Starter Site's use of aliases and what we consider to be best practices. A full description of creating and managing aliases is out of scope.

Best practices with URL aliases

While every site may choose to set up their aliases differently, we cannot prescibe a universal setup.

A common "nice-to-have" is the presence of the slug /islandora/ in the URL which identifies the content as "Islandora".

A potential "best practice" is that if your site uses persistent identifiers such as DOIs or Handles, that those identifiers make up part of the URL alias.

Use of URL aliases in Islandora Starter Site

The Islandora Starter Site includes the Pathauto module, which we consider that most sites will want to use in some way. However its default configuration should not be interpreted as prescriptive. You are encouraged to use persistent identifiers if you have them!

The default Pathauto pattern for Repository Items is /islandora/[node:title] with the pathauto configuration trimming the alias at 100 characters.

Preserving Legacy URLs

Sites migrating from Islandora Legacy may wish for their objects to still be available through their old URLs, with the pattern /islandora/object/[PID].

Options for doing this include:

  • Populating field_pid with the legacy PID, and using Pathauto to create URL aliases of the pattern /islandora/object/[node:field_pid]. However, you will need to set up something for new objects that don't have Legacy PIDs.
  • Use discoverygarden's "PID Redirect" module, which creates "301 Moved Permanently" redirects from legacy URLs to the appropriate node, based on field_pid.
  • Manually managing redirects in your webserver.
Last update: July 17, 2024