MyPostings: Addition of Slug for SEO/URLs
- Roberta Roebuck
This documentation will outline the addition of a new field in MyPostings, currently only available to School of Business posters and MyPostings administrators (mainly University Communications and Web Services). Rather than updating the global MyPostings documentation for all USD users, we have chosen to document the change here so as not to confuse those who do not have access to this new field.
Overview of New “Slug” Field
Located in General Information just under the main Title/Headline field
Text field, max 200 characters
Please only use lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes/hyphens
This field is used to replace the “_focus=99999” of a post’s detail URL. Example is be demonstrated in a later section on this page.
Slugs can be created for any category of post (e.g. news, event, spotlight, etc.)
Generating a Value in the Slug
Once you type in your Title/Headline and then click into any other field, the next being the Slug field, you will notice the system will auto-generate a slug for you. It will take your title and change all spaces and underscores to hyphens/dashes, all uppercase letters to lowercase, and finally remove all special characters (e.g. #, &, !, etc.)
The screenshot to the right is an example of an auto-generated slug.
Manually Updating the Slug
You can choose to keep the generated slug, or take a moment to manually update it to your desired value.
Please note if you change the generated slug, the system will once again correct any issues regarding spaces, uppercase letters, special characters, etc.
The screenshot on the right demonstrates a manual override of the value in the Slug field by the poster. Notice “usd-undergraduate-” has been manually removed by the poster to shorten the slug.
Verify Your Slug
Assuming you are done editing your post, and you have submitted all of your changes, as usual you will be redirected to the update/create post confirmation screen.
Once you arrive on this screen the system will have yet again made sure the slug being entered has been cleaned for SEO and proper URL purposes.
The cleaned slug will be provided to you on this confirmation page.
You can highlight the slug and copy it for use in the next step. To copy once you’ve highlighted the slug text:
Mac: cmd+c
PC: ctrl+c
View a Post with it’s Slug, not it’s ID
Normally you’d view a slug on a public detail page using it’s ID, for example, this example post is viewable via:
Now, you have an alternative way to view the same post using its slug. The URL can now be:
Both URLs above direct to the same post.
Note that when using a slug, you can eliminate the “_focus=” part of the URL. It is simply the URL through detail.php, then a question mark (?), then the slug text as demonstrated in the 2nd URL above.
Please note that a post’s slug will work on ANY detail.php page on the USD website, not just the one demonstrated.
Troubleshooting and Other Information
If, when you add your slug to a URL, the page doesn’t return your intended post, go back into the post within the MyPostings manage area and verify the slug is accurate.
Please note that if others have access to your posts, they have the ability to change/add a slug to your posts.
We recommend once a slug is chosen, you and your department posters stick with that slug, especially if it is used for promotional material.
If you experience any issues or have further questions about this new field, please email mypostings@sandiego.edu.
Important Notes!
Be as descriptive, yet concise as possible.
DON’T DO (not concise): information-session
DON’T DO (too wordy): school-of-business-information-session-on-october-12-2020-from-4pm-to-6pm
DO: mba-information-session-october-12-2020
DO: mba-info-session-2020-10-12
Slugs must be unique! If you are not descriptive and end up with a slug that is the same as another department’s post, or the same as one of your previous post’s, there is no guarantee your intended post will display when used in a URL.
In the event duplicate slugs have occurred, setting up vanity URLs via Web Services IS NOT an option. Web Services will not create a slug from a URL with a non-descriptive slug (i.e. information-session) to your intended URL with slug, just because it is a duplicate of another post, especially if the slug already belongs to another department’s post. A vanity URL will redirect a user from someone else’s post to yours, hence the reason this is not an option. Please be descriptive and unique from the start.