[Pmwiki-users] Partial pagenames in URLs

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Sun Sep 12 14:38:24 CDT 2004


I have a question regarding the use of partial pagenames in URLs.
As most of you know, PmWiki has long had a feature whereby a URL
that specifies a WikiGroup but no pagename would be automatically taken
to the home page of that group.  For example:

   http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki
   http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki?pagename=PmWiki

are both automatically redirected to the PmWiki.PmWiki page, and

   http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook
   http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki?pagename=Cookbook

both automatically redirect to Cookbook.HomePage (since Cookbook.Cookbook
doesn't exist, it goes to Cookbook.HomePage).

All of this works great if the WikiGroup has a default home page,
but what *should* happen if the group doesn't exist or
doesn't have a default home page?  That is, where should

   http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Example

go if neither Example.Example nor Example.HomePage exist?

Currently PmWiki redirects to the $DefaultPage for the site ("Main.HomePage").
This is arguably wrong, but I haven't come up with an "obvious"
alternative.  The options I've come up with:

1. Redirect to Example.Example
      This would prompt with "Describe Example? here."
2. Redirect to Example.HomePage
      This would prompt with "Describe HomePage? here."
3. Redirect to Main.Example (a page named "Example" within group "Main")
      This would prompt with "Describe Example? here."
4. Display a page indicating that the page (group?) they specified
   does not exist, and provide links to either create the new page
   or search the site
5. Redirect to the site's home page defined in $DefaultPage
6. ...?

Options #1-3 work okay, but are likely to confuse new visitors to the site
who may have simply mistyped a URL.  #4 seems like the best option,
but I'm not exactly sure how it would be worded.  #5 is the current
situation.

Suggestions?  How do you wish it would all work?  Whatever we decide
will be placed into PmWiki 2.0, and possibly be backported or provided
as a Cookbook module for 1.0.  (Actually, it's possible to create
Cookbook modules to do any of the above, in case someone disagrees with
PmWiki's default.)

Pm



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