Restful URL versus web forwarding with masking

I originally had our domain pointed to the http://www.xxx.org/ojs-2.4.2/index.php/jom where xxx is the domain of the server OJS is running on. This worked fine for 3 years but it was messy. I then went to the domain registrar and changed the domain forwarding to include masking so that it would show up as www.journalname.com. What I found was that it was not possible to log in with that masking in place. Can someone explain why? Thanks,!

This leads into a technical dicussion on Restful URL sna how they work. Cheers!

It sounds like you are using the journalname.com name as a proxy for the original long name. If so, how specifically is the proxy configured?

In changing the URL, you should consider the base_url and restful_urls directives in config.inc.php.

The restful_urls directive essentially instructs OJS to output URLs assuming that “index.php” does not need to be in the path. The actual mapping of the URLs to the OJS filestructure is left to the webserver (typically Apache with mod_rewrite).

If you are using a proxy configuration, another variable to consider is “trust_x_forwarded_for”.

Thanks. The www.journalname.com was simply “forwarded” using Network Solutions forwarding tool which worked fine but left the long http://www.xxx.org/ojs-2.4.2/index.php/jom urls on the browser. I then turned on a feature they call “url masking”

Before enabling url masking entering www.journalname.com would deliver me to http://www.xxx.org/ojs-2.4.2/index.php/jom and that long ojs url would stay.

With URL masking www.journalname.com would deliver me to www.journalname.com and OJS was there…but I was unable to login or do anything else.

I thought this would be a cheesy and cheap way to get the domain name in place ofhttp://www.xxx.org/ojs-2.4.2/index.php/jom but I was mistaken. Thanks.

I suspect the “url masking” is really just a form of proxy and/or url rewriting, and the problem that it is running into is that it is unable to account for the site level resources used within the journal level access.

Something we can contract you folks to configure?

You might try PKP Services? I don’t know if this custom ad-hoc setup is something they do or not.

Are you all connected together?

Richard A. DeVito Jr.
Publisher
Weston Medical Publishing, LLC, 470 Boston Post Road, Suite 301, Weston, MA 02493 USA
radjr@pnpco.com - 781-899-2702 ext. 107 - 781-899-4900 fax
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