Understanding URL vs HURL in Freedom

URLs vs HURLs

For the most part, all pages in Freedom have two addresses, a long one and a short one.

URL

The long one is called a URL, as seen in the example below. Notice how it has parameters that would make no sense to an end user e.g. "src=blog", and "srctype=detail". This tells us we are looking at something in the Blog Module and specifically, we are looking at a single item (detail) as opposed to a list (lister) or some other custom layout.

https://example.com/index.php?src=blog&srctype=detail&refno=351

HURL

The short one is typically called a "HURL", or "Human-readable URL". Essentially, it helps abstract away some of the things the user likely doesn't care about. In the example below, we can clearly see we are looking at something in the News module, Sports category, titled Wildcats Win - much more palatable for people to see.

https://example.com/news/sports/wildcats-win/

The URL is the "real" path of the resource, the HURL is a shorthand path Freedom makes dynamically - this can sometimes cause issues. For example, it is possible for Freedom to abstract away too much information, resulting in a HURL pointing to the wrong page. This is rare, if you have questions, please reach out to the Customer Care team and we'll be happy to help out.

 

Creating links using the HURL instead of the URL

The Insert Link dialog (shown below) will create a link using the URL, not the HURL.

A way to override this is to use the Link Wizard (shown below) to find the page you are looking for. The Link Wizard will then show you the URL and the HURL (also shown below).

Once here, copy the HURL and go back to the text you are looking to link. Highlight the text and hit Cmd + K on Mac or Ctrl + K on Windows. This will open a different Insert Link dialog (shown below). Here, paste the HURL from the link wizard in the URL field and click Ok.

Your text linked with the HURL, not the URL, should now be working!