Enabling Vanity URLs with Adobe Experience Manager

Statement -  Handling Vanity URLs Using the AEM Dispatcher Module

Solution:

• Recent updates to the AEM Dispatcher module (since version 4.1.9 of the module) allow authors to directly control vanity URLs from within the Author UI, and these are automatically pushed out to the publishers, which then expose them to the dispatchers. 

Steps to be followed:

• On your AEM Publish nodes, download and install the VanityURLS-Components (https://www.adobeaemcloud.com/content/marketplace/marketplaceProxy.html?packagePath=/content/companies/public/adobe/packages/cq600/component/vanityurls-components)
• package from Adobe Package Share, or pull it down and install it manually in /crx/packmgr.
• Go to the /useradmin on your Publish instance and allow “Read” permission to /libs/granite/dispatcher/content/vanityUrls for the “Everyone” group. Do this by double-clicking the “Anonymous” user, Then go to “Permissions” and check the “Read” column for the above path.
• If you don’t have an allow-all in your dispatcher configs, add a filter rule in the dispatcher to allow the vanity URL to be called on Publish instance:

/0100 { /type "allow" /url "/libs/granite/dispatcher/content/vanityUrls.html" }

• Add a caching rule to prevent caching of this URL:

/0001 { /type "deny" /glob
"/libs/granite/dispatcher/content/vanityUrls.html" }

• Add the vanity_urls configuration to the farm:

	/vanity_urls {
	/url "/libs/granite/dispatcher/content/vanityUrls.html"
	/file "/tmp/vanity_urls"
	/delay 300
	}

• Re-start Apache.
• The file defined at the /file setting is not automatically created/updated at the time interval set at /delay, but only when a request is made that fails the /filter rules of your dispatcher. On fail, it checks to see if the file is there —
•  if not, it will generate and use it by pulling /libs/granite/dispatcher/content/vanityUrls.html from the publisher. If it is there, and not older than /delay seconds, it will use it. Finally, if it is older than /delay seconds, it will update it from the Publish instance and use it.