Custom permalinks per post with different languages and jekyll-redirect-from

[idachev-shipcars]

Hello, I want to set a custom permalink for my posts here with examples:

My EN page:

---
page_id: hf-power-amplifier-1kw
lang: en
title: 'HF Power Amplifier 1kW'
date: '2014-07-06T14:06:49+00:00'
author: lz2gl
permalink: /hf-power-amplifier-1kw/
...

My BG page:

---
page_id: hf-power-amplifier-1kw
lang: bg
title: 'HF Усилвател 1kW'
date: '2014-07-06T14:06:49+00:00'
author: lz2gl
permalink: /hf-усилвател-1kw/
...

As you can see, these two posts are linked with the page_id.

And what I expect is to have an English link https://mysite/hf-power-amplifier-1kw/ and a Bulgarian link https://mysite/hf-усилвател-1kw/.

But the second link is redirected to https://mysite/hf-power-amplifier-1kw/ with the Polyglot logic for jekyll-redirect-from.

My correct Bulgarian page is generated at https://mysite/bg/hf-усилвател-1kw/, but I do not want this. I'm expecting that if I say custom permalink: /hf-усилвател-1kw/, it will be generated as https://mysite/hf-усилвател-1kw/.

Do you have any idea how to handle this?

I'm migrating from WordPress to Jekyll, and this is stopping me as I have a lot of established good SEO with Bulgarian URLs.

[untra]

hello @idachev-shipcars 👋

Unfortunately the design of polyglot is meant to coordinate the alternate language sites namespaced under that language path, so the permalink of a bulgarian page will start with /bg/ if it's not your default language. If bulgarian is not the default language for your site, then all bulgarian pages are prefixed with /bg/ going forward with polyglot.

However jekyll-redirect-from does support defining additional specific redirects from existing routes, so in your bulgarian page you should be able to specify:

---
page_id: hf-power-amplifier-1kw
lang: bg
title: 'HF Усилвател 1kW'
date: '2014-07-06T14:06:49+00:00'
author: lz2gl
permalink: /hf-усилвател-1kw/
redirect_from:
  - /hf-усилвател-1kw/
...

and your existing links to https://mysite/hf-усилвател-1kw/ should redirect appropriately. Make sure you have a redirect.html setup to support this.

That said, I can see an improvement to be made in polyglot that could better support top-level redirects for custom language permalinks with redirects.
For example, https://polyglot.untra.io/yi-tiao-chao-chang-de-yong-jiu-lian-jie/permalink/ redirects to the default language page https://polyglot.untra.io/a-really-long/permalink/, when ideally it should redirect to it's chinese language couterpart https://polyglot.untra.io/zh-CN/yi-tiao-chao-chang-de-yong-jiu-lian-jie/permalink/ implicitly.

I hope this suggestion helps. Thank you for the feedback!

[idachev-shipcars]

Hello @untra

I tested this, and it does not work if the pages are linked with page_id.

If I remove this link, the redirect_form will start working, but the EN/BG switch will no longer recognize that these pages are for the same content.

So, I need some fixes :)

Unfortunately, all redirects that I put in redirect_form will not work if the page_id is in the post.

[idachev-shipcars]

Ok, here are some updates for those who end up here.

I will proceed with the following fixes:

1. I will make .htaccess redirect for my old URLs to /bg/...
2. I fixed the sidebar switcher to include the tongue in front of {{ page.permalink_lang[tongue] }}
3. I modified the sidebar switcher to this:

      {% for tongue in site.languages %}
      <div class="toggle-i18n-item">
        {% if page.permalink_lang[tongue] contains ':title' or page.permalink_lang == [] %}
        <a {% if tongue == lang %}style="font-weight: bold;"{% endif %} {% static_href %}href="{% if tongue == site.default_lang %}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.url }}{% else %}{{ site.baseurl }}/{{ tongue }}{{ page.url }}{% endif %}"{% endstatic_href %} >{{ tongue }}</a>
        {% else %}
        <a {% if tongue == lang %}style="font-weight: bold;"{% endif %} {% static_href %}href="{% if tongue == site.default_lang %}{{ site.baseurl }}{{ page.permalink_lang[tongue] }}{% else %}{{ site.baseurl }}/{{ tongue }}{{ page.permalink_lang[tongue] }}{% endif %}"{% endstatic_href %} >{{ tongue }}</a>
        {% endif %}
      </div>
      {% endfor %}

The key point is checking for ':title' or is empty.