Menu links to external websites returns 404 - not found error page. External links are valid.

Website: https://homeof.wisdeaf.org/office.

In the menu, click on "Get Involved". (or the "Store").
Click on either the "Support WAD" or "Join WAD"
It will redirect to a 404 page.

Steps to recreate:
1 - Go to the website https://homeof.wisdeaf.org/office
2 - Click on "Get Involved" menu (it drops down to show 2 submenu items)
3 - Click on "Support WAD"
You will see a 404 error page

In the backend, I have this menu item defined as a System - URL with the URL https://visit.wisdeaf.org/donate. The title is "Support WAD". I have the link to open in a new window.

The URL showing on the 404 page is: https://visit.wisdeaf.org/donate. This link is a valid one. This link is supposed to redirect to a page on the Zeffy platform.

(Please note: the website visit.wisdeaf.org is running YOURLs which is a link shortener and tracker system, open source. The URL https://visit.wisdeaf.org gives you a list of short links. If you click on one of the short links, it will take you to the correct page.)

I did some research (Google'd) and it seems that Joomla is using the alias to redirect to the web page. This is the wrong behavior. It should go to the website by the URL address and NOT the alias.

I tried turning off SEF/SEO but that did not resolve the issue. I also played around with the SEF settings and none appears to have resolved the issue.

My suggestion to resolve this issue is to change the behavior of menu item (especially for System URL links) to use the URL and NOT the alias. By the way, Joomla 3 (before the introduction of SEO) worked just fine with links to external websites.

I don't like the idea of creating articles and linking them to an hidden menu -- this was a solution suggested during my Google research but I feel this is not ideal.

(sidenote: Thank you for making a GREAT CMS product. Much better than the well-known, popular CMS system in my opinion.)