Considering scenario: there is one portal instance, two groups (either communities or organizations): street and workshop.

Each group has its own virtual host like street.bookpub.com, workshop.bookpub.com. Each group has its own public pages and private pages.

For example, the group street has following page structure

And each page has its own friendly URL like
For example, the group workshop has following page structure

And each page has its own friendly URL like

Requirements:
1) Set home URL global – scoped to portal-instance, like /test
2) When hit URL: http: //street.bookpub.com[/], it should show the page /test of the group street;
3) No redirect in the picture; that is, the URL http: //street.bookpub.com[/] stays non-changed.
4) When hit URL: http: //workshop.bookpub.com[/], it should show the page /test of the group workshop;
5) Again there is no redirect in the picture; that is, the URL http: //workshop.bookpub.com[/] stays non-changed.

Is this useful use case?

Solution proposal:

A. Add following properties


B. Implement home URL as new feature.

Your suggestions?

Thanks

Jonas Yuan
==================
The Author of Liferay Books:
Liferay User Interface Development
Liferay Portal 6 Enterprise Intranets
Liferay Portal 5.2 Systems Development
Liferay Portal Enterprise Intranets

Attached screen-shots - solution proposal test

Attachments:

home-url-01.png (33.3k), home-url-02.png (33.5k)

Added one more screen-shot

Attachments:

home-url-03.png (43.3k)

Hi Jonas,

I'm trying to understand the use case for this need. Without this feature, for each site the first page will always be shown when accessing the site using it's URL (even if it's a virtual host URL).

If the feature you suggest is implemented and used, then for all sites, the visitor would be redirected to an specific friendly URL, which BTW could not even exist.

Wouldn't that be less flexible for site admins than always showing the visitor the first page of each site?

Hi Jorge,

Thanks. If the feature got implemented and used, then for all sites, the visitor would be redirected to an specific friendly URL, which BTW could not even exist. But this is in the control of site admin, since site admin would be able to reset the default friendly URL like /home (with virtual host), or /web/guest/home.

This feature first keeps current behavior - always showing the visitor the first page of each site - when this feature got disabled.



This feature then adds more one more flexibility for sites admin - showing the visitor any page (friendly URL) of each site as home URL.

Refer to the blogs post:
making-home-url-and-web-content-seo-friendly-url-highly-configurable-in-multiple-web-sites

Hi Jonas,

I didn't fully understand you. Why would you need to have a home url which is not the first page in your site?

It is possible that when bringing in Liferay as a collaboration platform, business owners may want to maintain cross-linking between existing sites as well as maintain same top level navigation across them. So in that case, the first page may be a URL page to legacy system with similar look and feel.

Though the use case is not that common and possible to work-around such requirements, I think what Jonas is looking for is a valid scenario.

Hi Julio,

In most cases, it would be fine that first page is the home page.

But this will not cover other use cases.

See attach screen-shot

first level pages: home, resources, regions

for home page, it has children pages: feature, news, topics, and so on.

In one time, the home page could be "feature". Later, the home page should be "news".

That's home page URL is required to be highly configurable in some use cases.

Does it make sense?

Thanks

Jonas

Attachments:

home-url.png (204.0k)

Hi Jonas,

for that scenario, If I were the webmaster and I needed "all news" to be the home url now, I would move the "all news" page to the first place. wouldn't that work?

Hi Julio,

Yes, you are right that we could move the "all news" page to the first place. But real use case says that any page would be home page.

In this example, the page order are:

Home
feature, all-news, etc.

As you can see, the page "feature" is not the first page, but it is required to be home page.

"all-news" may become home page when new requirement comes.

That is, home page should not be the first page, and home page should be configurable.

Do you agreed?

Thanks

Jonas