Question Menu item pointing to a category uses the alias and not the URL I expect

Hi,

Setup

• I have a forum at quantumwarp.com/forum and within this I have several categories for my various projects.
• Each of my projects have their own page (joomla article) and on that page I have a menu module with various links. One of them is a support link and I want this to point to the relevant category in the forum. As an example I am using quantumwarp.com/projects/qwcrm
• I currently have a standard Kunena menu setup as per the instructions

Problem
I created the support link with the following details:

• menu type: Kunena/Show Category
• alias: support
• category ID: QWcrm

The menu item created points to the category and the correct page does load. However the URL of the loaded pages is not what I expect of quantumwarp.com/forum/5-qwcrm but the URL with quantumwarp.com/support .

If I navigate from quantumwarp.com/forum to the QWcrm category the URL is also quantumwarp.com/support . It is like this menu item is overriding Kunena rather than inheriting URL structure.

• The menu ID of 'forum' is 736
• The menu Id of 'Support' is 1113

Is the new menu item overriding Kunena?

Is this expected behaviour or is there an issue?

Joomla: 3.9.13
Kunena: 5.1.15

Thanks as always

Is this expected behaviour or is there an issue?

Yes, it's this expected behaviour if you the menu items not correct creates.
1. The correct address would be websiteaddress.com/forum/support not websiteaddress.com/support
2. The Alias for the website address and the Menu Item Alias are two different things.


Move the Menu item "menu type: Kunena/Show Category" from the Projects menu to the Kunena menu. Choose as param item "Forum".
Now you have a new tab named QWcrm. You can hide this tab in the menu setting "Link Type -> tab Display in Menu".

Now create in the menu Projects a menu item to the category (Menu Item Type -> System Links -> Menu item Alias ) and select the new Kunena menu item. You can use the same name QWcrm for this menu and it's no matter what you enter in the field Alias. It goes always to the target /forum/support

thanks for the info

Using menu aliases is not really a great solution. It has problems associated with it, like the extra level of management you need to do if you rename a category.

Will this be fixed in Kunena 6 so it has a proper router? These additional menu items should be able to use the forum 'parent' menu item to build the correct URL. i.e. set the forum parent and then all items will be children of it. This would prevent the need for using menu alias for displaying a category etc..
You could create a new menu typer called 'Forum Parent' or 'Forum Base'. Akkeeba release system uses this method.

NB: Aliases are not required. I will post my solution here shortly and this might be easily fixed/improved in kunena menu items.

How to Create menu Items without aliases

NB: This assumes you have Kunena and it's menu setup as recommended.

1. Disable Joomla SEF in Global Configuration
2. On the front end browse to the category (or item) you want a link for
3. In the address bar copy the URL, but only index.php onwards e.g.
   Code:

   index.php?option=com_kunena&catid=5&view=category&defaultmenu=736&layout=default&Itemid=736
4. Go back to the Joomla admin and create a new menu item of type: System Links / URL
5. Fill in the link box with the URL you saved above
6. Give the menu a title. The alias will be filled in automatical and lgnored.
7. Turn Joomla SEF back on
8. Done

You will now find you have created a link to a Kunena Forum category without aliases and the SEF URL is created as expected.

Can Kunena Menu Items be fixed/Upgraded

Because I know I can manually create these menu items that respect my forum structure it should be relatively easy for the Kunena Team to upgrade/fix the menu items.

Requirements:

• There needs to be a base forum menu item that is mandatory (Akeeba Release System does this). This can be the parent item in the Kunena menu. There seems to be references to it at places with the variable defaultmenu=736
• If the menu items then have the variable of Itemid=736 added then they seems to be routed as if they were a child of the forum parent item.

It just seems that the menu items need some additional routing options adding.

Your thoughts

posted an issue on github github.com/Kunena/Kunena-Forum/issues/6602