Re: Link Management

cms-list wrote:

>I don't indend to dominate the list; let me know if these questions are better
>asked elsewhere.
>
>I'm wondering how different CMS vendords and implementations manage links in
>both structured and unstructured content (such as that greated by WYSIWYG
>editors).  Specifically, what does the system do when users rename, move or
>delete records?  If links are represented by GUID instead of path, rename and
>move seem pretty straightforward, but that doesn't address delete or linking
>by path.  I see a number of options that could possibly be combined:
>
>-workflow process provides link report for manual review before publication,
>prevents publication resulting in broken links
>-on rename/delete/move, list affected pages for update
>-published site disables anchor tag for invalid URLs
>
>What am I not considering?
>What are people using?
>What is working?
>

I think this is going to be specific to the CMS, but for us internal 
links would never break. We define several different types of links, for 
example:

<external_link 
href="http://outside.domain.com/something">link</external_link>
<email_link adress="[email protected]">contact me</email_link>
<internal_link idref="p12345">more info</internal_link>

by having semantically meaningful link node names you can catch theose 
elements in your XSL templates and perform the processing you need.

As for the internal link, using an identifier allows us three different 
renderings of the link:
1.) preview - simply submits the ID as the next 'focus' page and the 
server puts together the view
2.) edit - clciking the link gives the option of changin the linked-to 
page from a list of available targets
3.) runtime - the end result page has the link rendered relative to the 
page that contains the content piece

We have two options that ensures internal link integrity:
1.) light enforcement - if a page is deleted the page is rendered with a 
some styling indicating a broken link.
2.) hard enforcement - a quick search is done over the XML content to 
see if anything is linking to a page. if so, the page cannot be deleted 
until the content piece that links to the pages changes or is removed.

best,
-Rob