HubDB dynamic page URLs are becoming easier to access

HubDB dynamic page URLs are determined by a hs_path table column in HubDB tables. Previously, you could have both capitalized and uncapitalized characters in the field, allowing potential duplicate paths across rows. As of today we are now making the field force lower-case and dynamic page URLs going forward will be case insensitive. In some cases, we will be updating hs_path rows with no impact on existing live content or URLs.

Why is this changing?

There are a few issues that were caused by the hs_path column being case-sensitive.

• It became possible to have two paths that are identical but with just different capitalization. An example might be /product-1 and /Product-1. If you had two rows, one with each capitalization version, both of those URLs would be separate pages. This is not how most of the web works and would be a confusing experience for site visitors.
• If a site visitor had different characters capitalized or uncapitalized compared to what was actually in the hs_path field the user would get a 404 error instead of being redirected to the correct capitalization of the page.

What's changing?

• All new hs_path values and updates to existing hs_path values will be lowercased on update through the UI and API.
• If your account has hs_path values with uppercase characters, we will be updating the value to be lowercased.  There will be no impact on your live content or URLs which currently access that content.
• If you have hs_path values that would be in conflict when lowercased, we are leaving those entries and dynamic pages as-is to prevent issues with existing pages.

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