Reserved aliases - slackero/phpwcms GitHub Wiki

An alias is the human readable name that addresses a structure level, article, content part (news, guestbook, …) or file. It is used as index.php?<alias>, and as <alias>.html (or /alias/) once rewrite functionality is enabled. See URL handling for URL forms, rewrite configuration and 301/canonical behavior.

Some alias names are reserved because phpwcms uses them internally. An alias colliding with one of them is not rejected — phpwcms extends it with a suffix instead.

proof_alias() in include/inc_lib/backend.functions.inc.php blocks these names:

• print
• newsdetail
• newspage
• id
• aid
• subgallery
• listpage
• page
• subscribe
• unsubscribe
• email
• u
• s
• q
• feedimport
• r404
• phpwcms-preview
• dl
• fmp
• index
• robots
• sitemap
• favicon

When an alias is empty or reserved, proof_alias() appends a suffix that depends on the type of thing being named:

index is special: it is only suffixed when it is not the alias of the index page itself.

An alias is also checked against what already exists, and extended again when needed:

• A physical file at <alias><rewrite_ext> in the document root adds -1, -2, … (unless the target is a file alias).
• The same alias already used by a structure level, article or content part adds -01, -02, …; a file alias already in the file table gets -1, -2, … with the counter continuing from an existing numeric suffix.

Custom reserved aliases go into the config value $phpwcms['reserved_alias'] (shipped empty in include/config/dist.conf.inc.php):

// Block two additional aliases
$phpwcms['reserved_alias'] = array('myreserved-alias', 'blocked');

• Aliases are lowercased and sanitized (uri_sanitize(), clean_slweg()); / is kept only when $phpwcms['alias_allow_slash'] is on and the target is not a file.
• Alias length is capped at 230 characters.
• Structure level and article aliases are unique across both tables — an alias used by a level is not available to an article, and vice versa.
• With $phpwcms['allow_empty_alias'] enabled, an empty alias field stays empty instead of generating a value from the title or file name.

• URL handling — URL forms, rewriting, canonical links and the redirects admin
• Core concepts — aliases in context of structure levels and articles