From version 7.0.6, Zenario supports hierarchical URLs and language-specific subdomains for your website.
Hierarchical URLs are better for websites in general, as they improve SEO (search engine optimisation) and give the site visitor information about where he is within the structure of a site. For sites that are multi-lingual, the new options allow URLs to contain clearer language-related indicators.
Hierarchical URLs
You can now show the menu structure in the URLs of your Zenario site's web pages.
Without the menu structure in the URL, you may have a URL that looks something like "example.com/dog", but with the new URL your web page address could look like "example.com/animals/mammals/dog". This shows that dog is under mammals which is under animals in the site menu structure.
In order to enable the feature on your site, follow the guide below.
1) Go to Organizer > Configuration > Site settings > URLs then click on properties.
2) You will then see an admin box. Tick the box that says "Show menu structure in friendly URLs".
3) Your site's URLs will then look similar to this:
If the user were to delete "/dog" in the browser address bar and press Enter, the URL will then take them to the "mammals" page, as that is above the "dog" page in the menu hierarchy.
Note that if the user still types "example.com/dog", this will still resolve to the correct page, so they won't see a Not Found error. However, Zenario generates a canonical URL in the page source which contains the full path, such that search engines that index the page should save that hierarchical path.
Multilingual URLs using subdirectories
If your site is multilingual and the hierarchical URLs are enabled, the language code will appear as the first subdirectory in the URL path.
Google provides advice on this here.
For example if you had a US language website the URL would look like:
...and if there were a German (de) version the visitor would see:
Multilingual URLs using domains and subdomains
Each language of a Zenario site can now have:
- the same domain
- a language-specific sub-domain (say, en.example.com for English, or de.example.com for German)
- a different domain (say example.com for English, or example.de for German).
Each URL will enable effective geo-targeting from search engines and also provide users with useful information on the site's content.
To enable this on your multi-language site:
1) Go into Organizer > International > Languages.
Then select the language you want to have a subdomain and click "Properties".
2) A settings box will appear and in it you must tick the "Use a language-specific domain".
The box "Domain" will then appear. Here you can enter a new domain such as "example.de" or, as the example below shows, a subdomain such as "de.example.com".
Please note that the domain/subdomain must be setup on your DNS server before completing this step.
3) Click save.
You can see the domains associated with each language on your site by clicking on the adjust view button and showing the "Domain" column.
4) Now when accessing the German part of the website, the URL looks like this:
I hope that's helpful, Zenario 7.0.6 is rolling out to Tribal Systems' hosted customers now, and will be available for download on this site in August 2015.
