This is written pretty complicated, where you actually only want to say: I need the alias field for external URLs to create proper URL paths. The field is hidden, please unhide it.
BTW: You could also use menu alias to achieve something similar. Create one menu item first, create the alias, point it to the first menu item, edit the first menu item and make it a child of the alias item.

That is in the title, I wanted to give some background info.

It was a purposeful decision but I truthfully don't remember why right now.

Just an FYI that there were 3 people in #joomla in the last 3 days with this problem.

I just tried it, and it works by filling in the alias field through Firebug. Is there a way to retrieve information about why that field is hidden?

We do have a warning there and one can enter an alias if desired
"
Warning!
Leave the alias field empty if the menu item alias and the menu item linked to by the alias have the same parent.
"

OOps, wrong menu type :)

@Titanomachy I followed your instructions and I am able to create the needed menu. I guess you are on a multilingual site thus the date. What you can do is login in the language you need the alias and proceed as normal.

The date in this case has nothing to do with multilanguage.

// Make the alias URL safe.
        $this->alias = JApplication::stringURLSafe($this->alias);

        if (trim(str_replace('-', '', $this->alias)) == '')
        {
            $this->alias = JFactory::getDate()->format('Y-m-d-H-i-s');
        }

@dgt41 Yes you are correct, the website is multilingual. Indeed, on a single language site the URL is formatted as you would expect (without a date). However, a login on the multilingual website with the same language as the front-end still gives me a date.

@infograf768 Sorry here it works as expected

What I was trying to explain is that, for a Menu of type External URL, as the alias is always empty, a date is entered in db (see code above), multilingual or not.

So the problem is that for external URL the alias doesn’t support utf-8

@dgt41 That was not what the issue is about. It is about the URL in the address bar.

and:

@infograf768 You are absolutely correct!

@Titanomachy You just need a menu with title and alias and href #. Right?

As @Hackwar says above, use the menu item alias instead of the External URL

No that won't work on a mobile device where you want to click to open the
menu
On 16 Oct 2014 17:28, "infograf768" notifications@github.com wrote:

As @Hackwar https://github.com/Hackwar says above, use the menu item
alias instead of the External URL

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#4706 (comment).

@Titanomachy try this:

The menu item alias as suggested by @Hackwar works, also on mobile. At least on my end (Bootstrap 3.3). I guess the issue as posted is not an issue at all. I just used the "External URL" menu item type for something it was not intended. I'll switch to the menu alias. Thanks.

I came here while searching for solutions about the same issue (bootstrap mobile). Well, there is a workaround for the bootstrap problem. But the original problem when using "External URL" still exists:

The issue with the aforementioned 'solution' is that the URL for a sub-menu item has a strange format. It has a date, and a time stamp in it. Like this: example.com/2014-10-16-00-38-41/article-name.

My suggestion is to unhide the alias field. Joomla tries to be smart here, but in the end, does and can not catch all possibilities. I have not found a good argument why it is hidden and can not be changed.

@titanomachy I would suggest to reopen this issue even if your personal problem can be solved with a workaround

Did you try Joomla 3.4 - as far as I can see you can create any alias you
want to with a menu item of type External URL

On 26 February 2015 at 00:18, diesl notifications@github.com wrote:

I came here while searching for solutions about the same issue (bootstrap
mobile). Well, there is a workaround for the bootstrap problem. But the
original problem when using "External URL" still exists:

The issue with the aforementioned 'solution' is that the URL for a
sub-menu item has a strange format. It has a date, and a time stamp in it.
Like this: example.com/2014-10-16-00-38-41/article-name.

My suggestion is to unhide the alias field. Joomla tries to be smart here,
but in the end, does and can not catch all possibilities. I have not found
a good argument why it is hidden and can not be changed.

@titanomachy https://github.com/titanomachy I would suggest to reopen
this issue even if your personal problem can be solved with a workaround

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#4706 (comment).

Brian Teeman
Co-founder Joomla! and OpenSourceMatters Inc.
http://brian.teeman.net/

See #4932 which was merged and is present in 3.4

Thanks for the information. Seems like a good timing that Joomla 3.4 has been released right now.