Page Builder | Problem With Routing URL And SEF-URL
S-D CONSULTING
Hi, I'm reporting major routing and sef-url issues with the use of collections and links to slug pages.
Analyzing the logs of a website I created, I noticed that PageBuilder accepts calls (chatGPT, for example) it shouldn't, creating absurd URLs that shouldn't exist and should return a 404.
Let me give you an example:
- Let's say we have a website with a conference program domain.com/scientific-program
- This program is divided into several days.
I create a collection of all the disciplines and everything works perfectly.
I then create the discipline slug, which contains all the program details for each session.
Within the sessions, I have speakers, who are part of another collection: domain.com/speaker
If I'm in the scientific program and then click on a speaker's name, it creates an incorrect URL:
domain.com/scientific-programme/discipline/name-of-speaker.html
But the correct URL is: domain.com/speakers/name-of-speaker.html
To achieve a user-facing solution, I created scripts that correct navigation so they are routed correctly and don't create duplicate URLs that penalize SEO and GEO.
This morning, while analyzing the logs, I noticed from a scan performed by chatGPT and other bots that they are responding with nonsensical URLs, such as:
domain.com/scientific-programme/discipline-1/name-of-speaker/discipline-4/name-of-speaker.html
This is an example, but essentially, they are responding with thousands of combinations that clearly impact the website cache.
Unfortunately, this isn't the first site I've encountered this problem on. Page Builder routing using collections doesn't take into account Joomla's routing, which, through menu items, correctly routes URLs for the user, but more importantly, it creates 404 errors for incorrect, non-existent URLs.
S-D CONSULTING
Accepted AnswerI would like to inform you that in order to manage this issue, I had to modify the htaccess file by providing instructions for the website I am working on.
RewriteRule ^en/speakers/[^/]+/(.*)$ - [R=404,L,NC]
RewriteRule ^en/programme/scientific-programme/[^/]+/(.*)$ - [R=404,L,NC]This way at least I got that after the second slash there must not be another SEF keyword.
But this solution only solves the problem on my site and that structure.
You need to strengthen PageBuilder's routing on collections, because it's a big problem.
Mehtaz Afsana Borsha
Accepted AnswerHI
Thank you for contacting us, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We’re glad to hear that the issue has been resolved. I will inform our development team so they can review it and take any necessary action.
-Regards.
hughes
Accepted AnswerIt also gives me weird URLs for blog posts. Are you fixing it?
S-D CONSULTING
Accepted AnswerMy temporary intervention was aimed at getting a quick fix on the site I was working on. To fix this, I would need to analyze the URL structure and do so via .htaccess, at least until they've resolved the routing issue.
Mehtaz Afsana Borsha
Accepted AnswerHi,
Thank you for your correspondence. To facilitate a thorough investigation of the issue on our end, we kindly request that you establish a staging site. Please share the login credentials for the staging environment with us. It is essential to ensure that only the staging site details are provided, as this precaution will allow us to address any concerns without impacting the live site. Our goal is to maintain transparency and ensure a seamless experience for both your team and our support staff. Thank you for your cooperation.
S-D CONSULTING
Accepted AnswerHi, I can also set up a staging area to show you the problem, but I see it on all your demos where the collection is used.
I'll give an example, but it happens on all of them.
I'll take the Mednic template as an example (but again, it happens with all of them), and go to the page where the Modern List doctor collection is defined: https://demo2.joomshaper.com/2025/mednic/index.php/doctors/doctor-list-modern
I'll take the first two doctors, Dr. David Johnson and Dr. Leo Chen, as examples.
The first doctor's link: https://demo2.joomshaper.com/2025/mednic/index.php/doctors/doctor-list-classic/dr-david-johnson
If you add /dr-leo-chen-np to the end of the URL for this link, it shouldn't work, it should return a 404 page, but it doesn't:
It even happens if I add a third doctor in the same link: https://demo2.joomshaper.com/2025/mednic/index.php/doctors/doctor-list-classic/dr-david-johnson/dr-leo-chen-np/dr-emily-clark-md
This is incorrect. On a website with active caching, an AI bot crawled it, intercepted the first incorrect URL, created infinite combinations, and created tens of thousands of PHP cache pages.
This situation can cause a serious problem on a server. The phenomenon is technically known as "cache poisoning," or, more specifically in the context of resource saturation, it is a problem related to the dynamic generation of error pages captured by the cache.
When a server is poorly configured, the cache (such as Varnish, Cloudflare, or Nginx) may store a 200 OK response even for nonexistent URLs, instead of returning a proper 404 Not Found.
Mehtaz Afsana Borsha
Accepted AnswerHi
I will show this to our dev team, if any more information is needed, I will inform you then kindly provide it.
Thanks.
S-D CONSULTING
Accepted AnswerHi, thank you, and I remain available for any tests. As I wrote when opening this forum ticket, in my case I solved it by customizing the .htaccess for the specific website, and also using some js.
It would be helpful to have a date for the resolution, because this issue affects all projects developed with PageBuilder that use collections with the slug.
I consider your project among the best on the market and I'm happy to help find a stable solution.
Mehtaz Afsana Borsha
Accepted AnswerHi,
Its already listed in our list, I hope by next update it will be solved.
Thank you.