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Authoring Tips – Tuesday, November 7, 2023
The Ghosts of Files Past
Springfield, IL – On February 15, 2023, an unsuspecting resident in a quiet rural Illinois town was innocently browsing a state agency’s website when confusion and chaos struck. The resident immediately contacted the proper authorities who launched an inquiry into the incident. The initial investigators were unable to determine the root of the occurrence. The DoIT WCM team was then called to the scene and within moments released the following statement:
User and Author Appearances
While Halloween is once again in our rearview mirrors, ghostly occurrences may still haunt our AEM users, especially those who do not properly unpublish a page or document prior to renaming, moving or deleting them. These pages may appear as a link to a user, but when clicked, they generally give the dreaded 404 Page Not Found.
In some cases, an author may delete a page without unpublishing, only to be told later the page needs to come back. In this case, we may see duplicate links with the same title as we can see in example 1.
In other cases, an author may wish to rename a page using the Move command. If the page was not first unpublished, a user may see an unwanted item in the navigation as shown by the "tieriimanager" entry in example two.
In both instances above, the highlighted items do not exist in the dam or at the very least do not exist how they are rendering on screen.
Example 1.
Example 2.
No Proton Pack Necessary
You will not need a special weapon from another realm to eliminate these unwanted specters; in fact, most Winchester’s would probably not have a clue where to start hunting. Yet, the process is simple, and the tools are already at your fingertips.
Document or page, the process is the same:
- Recreate a file with the exact same name and of the exact type as your ghost.
- Publish your newly recreated file.
- Unpublish your newly recreated file.
- Delete the newly created file.
Congratulations! Your ghost should now be vanquished.
It is pretty much a guarantee that we will all forget to unpublish at some point. It will happen. The important thing is to not panic and follow the steps to eliminate the resulting phantoms. However, being proactive when it comes to fighting ghosts is always preferable, so just remember these three simple words
ALWAYS UNPUBLISH FIRST!!!
Note: If your ghost file appears in search even after following the above steps, WCM may need to take an additional step not available to Agency users. If you are still experiencing ghosts in search after taking the instructed actions, please contact our WCM team at DoIT.Webservices@illinois.gov.