Weird- Some Of My Faa/aw Page Urls Have Changed

Might seem an obvious question, and don't take it the wrong way, but did you change your FAA name from Dave to David at some point?
Note: the same thing happens if you give a title a new name as it's part of the URI

- Richard Reeve
ReevePhotos.com

No I don't think so Richard. I don't believe I have the ability to change it myself.

Besides all of the page URL's seem to begin with "1-david-gordon.artistwebsites.com/featured" its the ending of the URL that has recently changed and there is a mix of some pages ending in "dave-gordon.html" and others ending in "david-gordon.html". It seems to be random.

Go behind the scenes and find the URL of your artist website. What does it say?

Jessica, it says "http://1-david-gordon.artistwebsites.com" behind the scenes - but the problem is at the END of the URL and its showing in some pages as -dave-gordon.html and other pages as -david-gordon.html. And it has changed on FAA because some of the links on my personal site were copied and pasted directly, checked and they were working. Now they are not - they have changed on FAA and AW.

@David

This sounds like what I stumbled into about a year ago.

If you go behind the scenes and change your first name in the contact information, say from David to Dave (or vice versa), it impacts all your future uploads. After the change, your artist name field when you upload new work would default to Dave Gordon instead of David Gordon unless you manually changed it with each new upload.

It doesn't immediately change past uploads, but if you edit any part of a past upload after you change names, the name field in the artist section of your artwork will switch to the new name. If you don't manually change it back, it will then save with the changed name in your URL and break links.

I discovered this accidentally because I changed my name to include my middle initial as it does just about everywhere but here in my bio. I didn't notice for a few days but every time I changed a past upload, it broke my links by inserting that changed name into the URL. I changed my name back at the time, but it's still a little issue that haunts me whenever I edit past uploads. I have to pay attention to what the URL says before I click edit to see which version of my name that past upload used.

Mark,

Thanks for your comments. I don't think I ever changed my contact info behind the scenes - not that I can ever remember. If that's how it works, then that's really screwy and FAA should let us know not to change anything - or what could happen if we do.

Dave

You do have the ability to have done this yourself. It is whatever the artists name is on that image. If you have put Dave, it is Dave in the URL

@ Abbie, "You do have the ability to have done this yourself. It is whatever the artists name is on that image. If you have put Dave, it is Dave in the URL".
Thanks for your reply but this seems to be different than what you described:

In the example below, as well as others, artist name is David but end of URL is dave.

http://1-david-gordon.artistwebsites.com/featured/coffee-cup-in-light-and-shadow-dave-gordon.html

It sucks because I have to check all of the links on my personal site to my AW pages to make sure they still work. No guarantee it won't happen again after I've gone through and checked/fixed everything. Some of my discoveries were working a week or two ago and now they are not. I've not changed artist name in that time I'm pretty sure.

Thanks,

Dave

Naturally this also impacts all of my previous marketing since some of the links I put up in G+, Twitter, Blogger, weebly, Pinterest, Stumbleupon and Linkedin are likely not correct either. No wonder I'm working so hard and not selling anything :(

@David - I doubt it happens often. Most people would never have a cause to go behind the scenes and change their names. Their address information, sure but name is probably way less common.

Maybe your issues is something else entirely or maybe you changed it and changed it back fairly soon after. If you did, it still set the ball rolling as I discovered.

In the past year, I've just gotten very observant about noticing what my name is in the URL before I click edit so I can be sure it stays the same after I save. ;-)

If it happened often, there would have been a lot more replies to this thread. =D

@Mark "If it happened often, there would have been a lot more replies to this thread"

Most people do not have their own sites linked to their AW sites so they would probably never notice it anyway. You'd never notice it unless you checked every link to your AW site from your personal site.

David - there are a lot of threads where people change the name of the artwork itself which has the same issue of broken links. That happens often, and is mentioned often in the forum, so I still think people would notice if they were changing their name and having the same issue of broken links.

But yes, I noticed it for the same reason you did, it broke the links from my external site to my AW.

'll do some experiments with changing the artist name but I'm confident I've not changed or if I ever did, it was a long, long time ago (this is my 4th year on FAA)."
It doesn't sound as if you are positive you never changed your name. Why would Dave be there?

"Why would Dave be there?"

That's what I've been asking.

OK doesn't look I'm getting anywhere with this thread so I'll close it.