How to link to entries in a channel?

Question

I have the following code

<div id="navbar" class="collapse navbar-collapse">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
        {exp:channel:entries channel="static" sort="asc" dynamic="off"}
            <li><a href="{url_title}">{title}</a></li>
        {/exp:channel:entries}
    </ul>
</div><!--/.nav-collapse -->

Which is looping through a channel I have for static pages on my website. Technically it is showing all the stuff it should do. This is the code it outputs:

<div id="navbar" class="collapse navbar-collapse">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
        <li><a href="small-builders">Small Builders</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

However, when I click the link it gives me a white page. I have the htaccess from the documentation set up. I'm new to ExpressionEngine. Am I missing something completely obvious? I just want to link the the entry I've created.

Answer 1

In ExpressionEngine, unlike in other CMS's, templates aren't assigned to channels. Templates are loaded based on template group/template name convention, and those templates display the content of whatever channel (or channels) you specify in the channel:entries tags that you use in those templates. (See docs on URL structure.)

Generally then, you'd link to an entry using {url_title_path="template_group/template"}. So if you used {url_title_path="www/static"}, your link would end up as example.com/www/static/small-builders. A channel:entries tag in the static template would then automatically load the content from the small-builders entry (so long as the channel parameter was correct).

But it sounds like you want your URL to simply be example.com/small-builders, in which case you're correct that using the Pages module is the way to go, as you can set an arbitrary (and absolute) URL, and assign the template you want to use no matter where it resides in your template structure.

Answer 2

<div id="navbar" class="collapse navbar-collapse">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
        {exp:channel:entries channel="static" sort="asc" dynamic="off"}
            <li><a href="{url_title_path='channel/template'}">{title}</a></li>
        {/exp:channel:entries}
    </ul>
</div><!--/.nav-collapse -->

This will output

<div id="navbar" class="collapse navbar-collapse">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
        <li><a href="http://yoursite.com/index.php/channel/template/small-builders">Small Builders</a></li>
    </ul>
</div><!--/.nav-collapse -->

Hope it helps!

Ref: https://docs.expressionengine.com/v2/add-ons/channel/channel_entries.html#url-title-path