One of the many things I enjoy working with Joomla is the ease of updating links and navigational menu items.

Recently, I have been receiving reports of dead-end links (see screen shot) to serveral S.C. County information pages.

After numerous fix attempts, the problem persisted.  Now I'm really getting frustrated!!! 

More on Background, Cause of Problem, Solution, and Lessons learned ...

Background:

I use OpenSEF Component for Search Engine Friendly URLs. It is very helpful because a default Joomla URL would look something like this:

• index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=195&Itemid=9
  Which means nothing to the users, nor does it help with search engines.

With OpenSEF Component, the URL would look something like this:

• http://www.statelibrary.sc.gov/charleston-county.html
  Much more useable and friendlier!

Cause of Problem:

After spending some time to troubleshoot. I have narrowed the cause of problem:

• Content items had the same Title
  For example: there were two content items with the same title: Charleston County.
• The difference between these two items is:
  • Item 1 - Charleston County Information
  • item 2 - Charleston County Library Information
• OpenSEF was confused because both of these content items would have the URL - "charleston-county.html"

Solution:

• Renamed one content item to "Charleston County Library"
• Deleted all entries of "charleston-county.html" from OpenSEF's list of Friendly URLs
• Voila!!!

Lessons Learned:

• Use an Unique Title for Each Content Item
• Looking back, Nothing was Ever as Bad as It Seemed! - which reminded me of a good book I read once - "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl