Skip to main content

Developing in Cascade how to

How can I set up canonical tags?

This article gives two sample methods for configuring canonical tags. They're examples, and may need additional development depending on your needs.

Self-referencing canonical tags

  1. Create a Velocity Format containing:

    Velocity 
    <link rel="canonical" href="${currentPage.link}" />

  2. Create a system-region within the <head> tags of your Template:

    HTML 
    <system-region name="CANONICAL" />
  3. Attach the Format to the CANONICAL region, at the Template, Configuration, or Page level.
  4. Visit Manage Site > Site Settings and change Link Rewriting to Absolute.
  5. Publish your pages.

For a single page or a few pages, attach the Format at the page level and set that page's link rewriting under Edit > Configure > Override the current Site's asset link rewriting behavior for this asset.

Adding an alternative canonical URL option

This example lets a page output a self-referencing canonical tag or point at another page instead.

  1. Create a system-region within the <head> tags of your Template:

    HTML 
    <system-region name="CANONICAL" />

  2. Create a Shared Field group with this XML:

    XML 
    <system-data-structure>
  <group identifier="canonical" label="Canonical Settings" restrict-to-groups="Administrators">
    <text field-id="eff3e93cc0a8003d49767a63e99b3d5d" help-text="Enable this if the current page is NOT the canonical page, e.g. it's a duplicate." identifier="canonical-alternate" label="Specify alternate canonical URL?" required="true" type="checkbox">
      <checkbox-item label="Yes" show-fields="canonical/canonical-url-type" value="yes"/>
    </text>
    <text field-id="eff3e93cc0a8003d49767a63e89422bd" identifier="canonical-url-type" label="Canonical URL Type" required="true" type="radiobutton">
      <radio-item label="Choose Page" show-fields="canonical/page" value="page"/>
      <radio-item label="Enter URL" show-fields="canonical/url" value="url"/>
    </text>
    <asset field-id="eff3e93cc0a8003d49767a63755ff381" help-text="Select the canonical page." identifier="page" label="Choose Page" type="page"/>
    <text default="https://" field-id="eff3e93cc0a8003d49767a638b0b971b" help-text="Enter the URL for the canonical page." identifier="url" label="Enter URL"/>
  </group>
</system-data-structure>
  3. Add this Shared Field group to the top of one or more existing Data Definitions.

  4. Create a Velocity Format containing:

    Velocity 
    #set ($canonical = $currentPage.getStructuredDataNode("canonical"))
#if (!$canonical.getChild("canonical-alternate").hasTextValue("yes"))
    ## use current page's URL
    #set ($href = $currentPage.link)
#else
    ## use alternate canonical page URL
    #if ($canonical.getChild("canonical-url-type").hasTextValue("page"))
        #set ($href = $canonical.getChild("page").asset.link)
    #elseif ($canonical.getChild("canonical-url-type").hasTextValue("url"))
        #set ($href = $canonical.getChild("url").textValue)
    #end
#end
## output the canonical tag
<link href="${href}" rel="canonical" />
  5. Attach this Format to the CANONICAL region.
  6. Visit Manage Site > Site Settings and change Link Rewriting to Absolute.
  7. Edit one or more pages, configure the canonical options, and publish.

Only users in the Administrators group see these options, because of the restrict-to-groups="Administrators" attribute on the field group. Remove or adjust that attribute for your own groups.