Hyperlink URL changing on edit

Permalink
Hi all,
New to Concrete5 and still learning but we have a site with several PDF downloads set in the products > attributes.
When first added, these urls show aswww.www.domain.com/download_file/view/1294...

Save and check front end, the url for the download link shows as:
www.www.domain.com/download_file/view/1294/273...
It's added /273 to the link but still works.

Yesterday I was asked to go and edit one of the products downloads (within attributes) and when I saved and checked the page again the links had changed from /273 to /314

This meant the downloads failed, so I had to go and manually edit the links to remove the /314.

Some downloads kept reverting to the /314 so I had to set the protocol to 'other' and manually change the link to be '/download_file/view/1294'

Is this working as it should or can anyone help in how to stop from happening?

Thanks

kembo
 
ConcreteOwl replied on at Permalink Reply
ConcreteOwl
In the file manager, when you have edited the file click the existing filename and choose 'Replace', upload the edited file and click 'Continue' in the dialog box.
That should preserve the file path.
kembo replied on at Permalink Reply
kembo
Thanks ConcreteOwl, When I go into the product attribute to change one of the links to a new file (rather than updating the file).
The file path is changing on all the links on the page.....so for example...I have a 3 links to pdf downloads.
I change the link on the 3rd to the new file (via attribute edit link > browse file).
Save changes and when the page is visited the first 2 links no longer work as their path has changed and in this case it's gone from: download_file/view/1337/273. to download_file/view/1337/1532
So I have to manually go back in and 'fix' the links by changing the protocol to 'other' and making the url download_file/view/1337/273 rather than domain.com/download_file/view/1337/273

Is this normal for Concrete?
ConcreteOwl replied on at Permalink Reply
ConcreteOwl
Yes it is normal.
Whenever you create a new file and save it, it is assigned a new file path as a string of folders.
If you want to keep the link as is and just change the file without changing the file path, use the file replace function in file manager.
kembo replied on at Permalink Reply
kembo
Thanks again,
Still getting my around how Concrete works, so all this is very useful info to know.
JohntheFish replied on at Permalink Reply
JohntheFish
If you use the force download option when generating a link to the file, that will be tied to the fID rather than the hashed storage location.
That is often preferable as the download then goes through the c5 core and is checked for permissions and counted in download statistics.
kembo replied on at Permalink Reply
kembo
Thanks John,
It is preferred to have the ftp open in the browser over forcing the download, but good to know.