Question

I used this solution to optimize urls, all works fine but there are a problem with danish characters (æ and ø) which sould be replaced to “a” and “o”. I used this in Web.config:

 <replace mode="on" find="æ" replaceWith="a" />
 <replace mode="on" find="ø" replaceWith="o" />

Urls looks good, but when I try to go by this link I got 404 error and if I manually change “a” to “æ” in url page opens.
Help me please!:)

Answer 1

Remember that replacement is two way. Generated URLs will subsitute a for æ.
Incoming URLs will replace a with æ when looking up items.

As Danish uses both letters simply replacing æ with a when you generate URLs will cause you all sorts of headaches – e.g. the item at-spise-æbler (“to eat apples”) will generate the URL at-spise-abler, which will be reverse replaced during item lookup to try and find the item æt-spise-æbler.

To be more consistent you should replace æ with ae, å with aa and ø with oe if you wish to replace Danish characters.

If you are also using replace mode to ensure all URLs are lower-cased (e.g. <replace mode="on" find="A" replaceWith="a" /> ) then your incoming URL containing an “a” will be interpreted as containing an “A” (assuming replacement is in order of the entries in the web.config and your lowercasing matches are first – if it’s the other way round then you still have other problems!). The item at-spise-æbler will still generate a URL at-spise-abler, but your item lookup may match a to A first, trying to find At-spise-Abler, which doesn’t exist.

The double letter substitution won’t help you here either, as Sitecore will simply match each letter to its uppercase version

A beter solution for you would be to actually rename items (or their display names) when they are created or edited.

This link shouldpoint you in theright direction: http://briancaos.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/sc-53-ensure-item-names/