Template Routes Manager remove index.php and template group?

Question

I've read all of the eecms documentation on Template Routes Manager to no avail. I don't see any simple tutorial on how to use template route manager to remove index.php or template_group name.

Is there an easy example of how to do this?

This user guide is garbage: http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/urls/template_routes.html

I've read it three times and somehow know less about template routes manager than I did before.

I've asked this question multiple times before with crazy suggestions. Suggestions that aren't scalable or user friendly.

Any takers? Not looking to use anyone as a crutch... If there's an awesome article you've read on this, you can share that! Anything, as long as it makes sense!

As well, I don't want to use Structure. It has caused many of my sites to crash over the past few years.

Answer 1

You can not use Template Routes to remove index.php from your URLs. To remove index.php from you URLs you need to set up a redirect in an htaccess file, there are instructions here.

Getting rid of the group name is where Template Routes comes in. Navigate to the Template Route Manager under Design ‣ Templates ‣ Template Route Manager. Locate the Route field for the Template you wish to change the URL for. In the Route field put the new URL you wish to access your template by and then click Update. For the simplest case of a static URL you would use something like:

/my-new-url

And now you should be able to access that template by going to

www.yoursite.com/my-new-url

Here is a blog post I wrote that walks through a couple examples of more complex Template Routes.

If you don't mind me asking, what did you find confusing about the documentation? We're always looking to improve our documentation, so if you have any suggestions we definitely want to hear them.

Answer 2

I agree the routing documentation truly is pretty terrible. No clear examples to even get a person started.

I just had a similar situation to yours that I just resolved. I have a product listing page and then an individual product page. My template group is products/index for the listing page, and products/view for the individual product page. So to view a product the default url would have been products/view/[product_name], but I wanted it to be products/[product_name].

In my Template Route Manager, I added this rule next to my products/view template: products/{product} and selected 'yes' for segment required.

That means that if the {product} variable is not in the url, that rule is not used and my products/index template takes over.

For some reason EE doesn't like certain variable names (the {product} part) in the template routing manager and will throw errors on the front end. I found this through experimentation, so I don't know what the deal is there.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

Removing index.php from the URL can be done in the .htaccess file. This technique has worked for me on several occasions. See Ellislab's information page. https://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/urls/remove_index.php.html