I'm finding that if I add a new page or change a back or next link on one or more pages, links on unrelated pages get changed - and not even to pages referred to in the changes I have made.
This effectively means that everytime I make one link change, I have to retest the entire site - help!

It might be the massive page link corruption bug.

But, if this is happening only when you change a link, it is probably not that. Have you deleted any pages? Can you provide some more details? There are other explanations, like "includes" that you don't mean to have -- but that doesn't match your described symptoms either.

Hi and thanks very much for the response. Yes, I do delete pages every so often, but always make sure I adjust my Back and Next links accordingly. It is an artist's website where new work is often added and sold work removed so there are a lot of link changes going on on a regular basis. Any other ideas?

Hi Jennifer,

You mention that you adjust your Back and Next links. Why do you have these?

The correct way to create a link is with the Link Editor. From there, you can select the page to go by selecting “page” from the link type, then selecting the page from the drop-down box.

If you delete a page that has been linked to from another page, that will certainly stuff up the link.

Using Back and Next does not select a certain page, but rather uses the browsers history for the last page visited.

As Bruce said, it would be handy if you could provide us with some more details.

Hi again,

I'm not sure what more details I can give...

As I mentioned, the website is that of an artist who likes to have the site work like a book, with you paging through by using NEXT (and BACK if you want to go back). Maybe it will help if you have a look at the site: www.michaelheyns.co.za.
I change my links by going into the text editor (on NEXT for example), highlighting the word then right-clicking and going to Edit Link. Then I select the Page link type and select the page from the dropdown list as you describe.

Are we doing things in a very screwy way??

quote:

Originally posted by postyr:
Hi Jennifer,

You mention that you adjust your Back and Next links. Why do you have these?

The correct way to create a link is with the Link Editor. From there, you can select the page to go by selecting “page” from the link type, then selecting the page from the drop-down box.

If you delete a page that has been linked to from another page, that will certainly stuff up the link.

Using Back and Next does not select a certain page, but rather uses the browsers history for the last page visited.

As Bruce said, it would be handy if you could provide us with some more details.

As I understand it, you are using regular page links for your pages, even the ones labelled "Back" and "Next". You are not using the [previous] and [next] links that are near the head of the drop-down page list.

If so, it seems to me that you are making your page links correctly.

I notice you have spaces in your page names. This is something to avoid as it can lead to screwy problems such as you are having. I suggest you fix that as your next step, as it just might fix the other problem. But I am far from confident that it will.

If it doesn't, the kind of extra details we need are these:
1. A link to the .ims project file which should be auto-backed up to your site. This will allow us to download your project and try to duplicate the steps you are taking.
2. When you add a new page, can you point out some links that change?
3. When you change a next or back link, can you point out some unrelated links that change?

In listing a few links like this, some pattern may emerge, which will then lead us to the cause of the problem.

I really appreciate all the trouble you are going to. I will immediately take out the spaces in my page names and look at your built in Back and Next options. I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't really noticed them, making all my links manually so to speak to fit in with the design of the site. I will look at that as well as get back to you if I have any further problems.

Well done on great after sales support!

I'm not suggesting that you use the [previous] and [next] page links -- I just wanted to establish that you haven't been using them so that we could eliminate them as the source of this problem.

I don't use [previous] and [next] myself and am in some doubt about what [previous] and [next] actually are -- I think those terms refer the order in which you create your pages. I'm also not sure whether the page order function that you can set via the Page Editor, changes those links so that they follow your page order.

But as you seem to be not using [previous] and [next], we don't need to go down that path

quote:

...am in some doubt about what [previous] and [next] actually are...

I don't want to confuse the issue but I thought, as an aside, I'd just let you know about the previous/next links in the text editor (because if Bruceee's not sure maybe nobody is).

When you select a [page] type link in the text editor's link editor, you can choose a page name or one of the placeholders [home], [previous], [next] or [end].

[home] goes to the first page in the project.
[previous] goes to the page before the current page in the project.
[next] goes to the page after the current page in the project.
[end] goes to the last page in the project.

The page order is determined by the order you have given the pages in a project. They are calculated at publish time.

The published links contain the actual page name so they will not change after publishing even if you change the order of your pages.

If you do change the page order and want that change to appear on your website you will need to re-publish the pages in question.

That's it.

Thanks for all the input. I can see that most of our site won't be able to use the previous and next options because of how often I change links between pages. When a new painting becomes available, I like it to be the first one people see if they go to look at available works. This means changing the link from 'AVAILABLE WORKS" (to the new first work/page) as well as the BACK link on the previous first work/page.

I am busy with some big reorganizing of pages at the moment and will let you know if I come up with further problems.