Some additional notes that explain the thinking / application behind the above code:
The core issue is that it is almost impossible to navigate from an external site/browser to an anchor in a WiX using something like:
… Somesite / some-page # some-anchor
In testing, I discovered that trying to pass anything into a WiX site that contains a “#” character in the URL string causes confusion at best.
However, you can successfully pass parameters from an external location in a URL destined for a WiX site. Something like this, will work:
… Somesite / some-page ? some-name = some-value
i.e. You can, in WiX Velo, tell it to look for the variable called “some-name” and, if found, extract the value after the “=” character. i.e. Will return “some-value”.
All objects in WiX site have a unique ElementID associated with them. Some objects, like buttons, can point to links/anchors. Left to their own devices, all your buttons on a site will have an ElementID something like “# buttonNN” , where “NN” is a unique number.
We know we can write Velo code to extract information about and control the behaviour of individual elements by referencing them via their unique ElementID. Using the ability to pass parameters we can tell our Velo code which ElementID we want to control. So, an external URL like this will work:
… Somesite / some-page ? some-elementID = button77
In Velo code, we could look for the variable “some-elementID” and, if found, extract the value “button77”. Add the “#” character to the front of this in code to get “# button77”. Now we can manipulate the unique object called # button77.
N.B. I have not yet found a successful way to pass the “#” character via an external URL into a WiX site/Velo code, so I decided to add it in code.
Having worked out the principles involved, I applied them in this way to allow me to navigate to any anchor, anywhere on our WiX site:
I created a page on our site called “redirect-to”. This page is a placeholder for any anchor I want to be able to navigate to from an external URL/location. The page name itself is not important, you can use any page name you like.
I placed a number of buttons on this page. For readability, I renamed the ElementID to be the same name as the Anchor / Link that the button points to. i.e. A button that is linked to the anchor “WhatWeDo” has been given the ElementID “# WhatWeDo”.
N.B. The page name is not important. You could call your page anything you like. In fact, there is no reason I can currently see why a variation of the code below could not appear on every WiX page if you altered the code to not assume that an external or valid variable will always be passed. i.e. Make the default action to always load the base URL unless a valid variable/anchor reference is passed.
“WhatWeDo” is different to “whatwedo” - the latter would fail and be redirected to our custom 404 page.
In creating the “redirect-to” page, I put one button on the page and linked to it our home page first. Then copied that button until I had twenty buttons in total. Spaced them out neatly, hid them etc. i.e. We can cope with up to 20 unique redirects on this page. Could add more buttons, could have less buttons.
The “redirect-to” page itself is just a place holder. You could actually put this code on any page and use any Element that you know the ID for and which can have a valid link associated with it. A picture menu with each picture linked to a specific destination? Every page on your site could handle anchor redirects. This might be useful for large/complex sites? Could also be used to create navigable blogs if you broke large blogs down into multiple individual blog posts.