Pathauto module not bulk generating new aliases
I was in the process of building a new site today and wanted to rebuild all my URL aliases to use a better format (the site is not yet live, so I didn't have to worry about the search engine impacts of it). I deleted all the current aliases in the system (Site Building > URL aliases > Delete aliases) and told Pathauto to rebuild them (goto pathauto configuration screen and check the "Bulk generate aliases for [nodes/categories/users] that are not aliased" checkboxes) but I was told by Pathauto that no aliases had been generated.
It turns out that when the Pathauto update action "Do nothing. Leave the old alias intact" is selected (which is better for SEO) it doesn't bulk generate new aliases, even when no alias exists. I guess this is "better safe then sorry" logic that the Pathauto maintainers decided upon, but it's a little counter intuitive. When I tell my system to "Bulk generate aliases for [nodes/categories/users] that are not aliased", I expect it to do just that.
Simple fix is to change your update action setting to "Create a new alias. Delete the old alias.", bulk generate your new aliases and then change the setting back.
Comments
No Simple Fix
Glad to see someone else doesn't think this makes sense. However your suggestion of setting to "Create a new alias. Delete the old alias." will destroy any alias's you have manually created. Isn't that exactly what you are trying to avoid with the original setting? I'll submit this as a bug unless I can find it has allready been reported.
I was going crazy until I
I was going crazy until I found this post. I spend many hours looking at this 'problem', thanks for the solution.
Think I was having this problem the other day.
I'm still new to Drupal and path auto module, but I think this is why I was having grief with making changes to my url structure. I will keep this mind.
My site is new so I wasn't too worried about breaking url's etc..
Thnaks for your overview
I think index aliases are not good for SEO and I would not agree that they provide much benefit for the users. The creation time for nodes is stored anyway so you could build an archive view using these data.
Using index aliases will not only bloat the url_aliases table but will generate many pages with similar or even duplicate content and will add many more navigational links. Too much navigational choices don't increase a site's usability.
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