How can I set up 2 fallback pages?

[Anonymous]

Is there a way to set up 2 fall back pages per a multi-domain web site in marketo?

To my understanding we can only set up one fall back page per 1 marketo instance.

Is the a way to set up 2 fallback pages?

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Sure.  Well, actually, you still use one fallback page as configured within the Marketo UI, but you can have it redirect transparently based on the domain the user entered.

Go into your fallback page's Landing Page Actions >> Edit Page Meta Tags.

Set Robots = 'noindex,nofollow'

In Custom HEAD HTML enter the following:

<SCRIPT>

     document.location.replace('//www'+document.location.hostname.substring(document.location.hostname.indexOf('.')));

</SCRIPT>

<NOSCRIPT>

     <META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL='http://www.example.com/'" />

</NOSCRIPT>

The code above assumes you want http://pages.example.com/non-existent-landing-page to fall back to http://www.example.com, but it can be tweaked to whatever you want.

In the <NOSCRIPT> section, change 'www.example.com' to whatever you want your super-default domain to be: the tiny fraction of users with JS disabled will still go to this domain, but everybody else will be dynamically redirected.

[Robert_Kelen3]

Sanford Whiteman, can this approach also be used where there are different top level domains for the multiple domains in question? For example, megabrand.com (and their megabrand instance) has two different Domain Aliases set up for brands they own (let's call them brand_a.com and brand_b.com, with info.brand_a.com and info.brand_b.com as their two landing page domain aliases); and they want any fallback from bad links to go to the respective brand domain.

[SanfordWhiteman]

It can absolutely be used across private domains (that's kind of the idea). Unfortunately, though, Marketo has made this much harder to do by stopping relative URLs as fallback pages. You can still do it by hacking the UI, if you want to go that route...

[Robert_Kelen3]

Is "hacking the UI" something you've written on elsewhere? Where does this fall on the "lots of work" to "a little Javascript'll do ya" continuum?

[SanfordWhiteman]

It's like my linebreak token method. So no coding, but takes some nerve.

[Robert_Kelen3]

Well, I'm no programmer, but that all made sense to me, and I do understand what you mean about hacking the UI now. Thank you!

What sort of hack is required to achieve the desired effect in this example?

[SanfordWhiteman]

You've gotta get the fallback page to be just /pagename.html. The UI will change this to http​://pagename.html. So you need to replay the request and take out the extra stuff.

[Robert_Kelen3]

You've gotta get the fallback page to be just /pagename.html. The UI will change this to http://pagename.html. So you need to replay the request and take out the extra stuff.

Actually, even with the replay (UI hack) the system still appears to append the 'http:/' in a way that prevents this approach from working.

[SanfordWhiteman]

I got it working for me -- try to refresh the page right after the hack.  Still, maybe not worth it.

[Robert_Kelen3]

I think it would be worth it if I could get it work, but alas, I can't seem to stop it from re-appending the "extra stuff".

[Robert_Kelen3]

Makes sense. Then the JS from your original post is somehow adapted to sort whatever one calls the middle part of the domain name instead (choosing the .brand_a. or .brand_b. part)? Even still, aren't we talking about the same single page in Marketo?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Right now, it redirects from {landing page hostname}.example.com to www.example.com.

It doesn't care whether the real-world domain is actually brand-a.net or brand-b.org.

[Robert_Kelen3]

But in the Marketo LP example here, pagename.html (which let's assume was successfully and forcibly placed by the UI hack) is still the same content whether it's being viewed from info.brand_a.com/pagename.html or info.brand_b.com/pagename.html.

What's still needed to give the user an actual brand_a vs. brand_b experience?

Would the JS be instead applied to tack a parameter on the end for runtime segmentation?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Sure, you could def'ly use Runtime Segmentation if you need different content! Redirect to '&Brand=' + document.location.hostname and segment on Brand.

Or if there were just a tiny amount of difference you could do it with just CSS show/hide.

[Anonymous]

SB Demo​ Moving to Products and Support​ where I think more people will see Marketo related questions.