How can I create an /admin url folder?

[ThomasJ]

Hi everyone,

I am relatively new to Bubble. I am in the process of creating an admin section to manage content on my site. I’d like all admin pages to be under an /admin folder. The url would look like: www.my-site.com/admin/some_admin_page.

I’m sure there is a very straightforward way to do this but I can’t find it. I created an admin folder but that does not seem to translate into the URL (just a way to organise pages).

What am I missing?

Many thanks

Thomas

[juicebox]

Short answer, I know what you’re trying to achieve, but it doesn’t quite work like that unfortunately.

Bubble only really supports building ‘pages’ as the first subdirectory.

What you can do however (and would make sense for admin section) is build your entire admin section as a SPA and then use the URL to decide what groups are hidden or shown. This is a bit more finicky but would give you the experience you’re after.

[ThomasJ]

Thanks @juicebox - really appreciate your help.

I’m quite surprised that Bubble only supports building pages as the first subdirectory. What if you wanted to create a different URL (with subfolders) for SEO purposes?

[juicebox]

SEO is a common use case for subfolders and there’s even a few plugins that are designed to help you mimic URL’s in an attempt to build an ‘ideal URL structure’.

As a result (and for other reasons too), Bubble isn’t really the sharpest platform for SEO. However from my personal experience;

1. The overall functionality and opportunity that Bubble provides in the first place outweighs SEO limitations for many apps
2. If you have a solid technical grasp of SEO, as you spend time in Bubble, you’ll pick up on ways to achieve various SEO outcomes (and structured data is something that Bubble can do pretty well)
3. If your app really is just content, then you’re definitely better to go elsewhere. If you’re looking for advanced functionality that you can build yourself, then Bubble is the place to be.

[ThomasJ]

Yeah… my app is mostly content: I’m building a big directory. So SEO is absolutely critical. I’ll have a look at plugins.

I have to say - I have an engineering background but I decided to use Bubble to speed up the development of an MVP. I have been super impressed. It’s really astonishing how quickly you can get stuff done… but that limitation really surprises me. I’m guessing it’s by design but I really can’t comprehend why they would do something like this.

[juicebox]

Fair enough, so for your listings you would basically end up with /listing/listing-name but it’s a bit more complicated to include the listing category or subcategory in the URL. I’ve also built a directory on Bubble and just ended up using breadcrumbs schema to try to signal to Google where things belong. Not too much value in the content from my listings though because they sort of end up holding a bunch of duplicate content which obviously holds no ranking value.

Exactly, so you see first hand how the other facets of Bubble make it a really great tool. From Bubble’s perspective, it might be that the apps that are actually making them big money are either mobile apps or SaaS apps where SEO isn’t a huge consideration. This makes the business case for investing in SEO harder to quantify.

For the most part Bubble supports functionality to get the standard SEO stuff right, albeit a bit clunky sometimes and various SEO tools still struggle to pick it up due to the heavy dependence on JavaScript to render pages.

Arguably the trendiest SEO consideration right now is Core Web Vitals, and it goes without saying that Bubble undeniably falls short in this regard. The new responsive engine is a step in the right direction but it’s still got a very long way to go.