XenForo Friendly URL's, question for Kier or Mike

[mrGTB]

Just wondering what made either Kier or Mike include the Thread ID at the end of the Thread Title using a Dot (full stop) as a separator like this below.

threads/demo-thread.1728/

Why go with: .1728/

Just wondering what the thinking is behind it? And why you didn't use something like this instead.

threads/demo-thread/1728/

or this:

threads/1728/demo-thread/

 

[krystofo]

Thank you YOGURTFARMER. Good to have your perspective. And your "Forum Vancouver" is very nice too. I would just like to say:

1. Alright, it probably doesn't matter where that number is. We are all chronic with "geek dyslexia" anyway. In any case, I believe in reducing the words.
2. P.S.--I do not know whether 301 forwarding might break the Link Credit? Google might not give link credit for any link that does not give the "official" URL for that page. A "link text" is expected to vary but a URL is not. I.e., in my opinion, on balance you had better decide on URLs that "look respectable," and don't change.
3. Search traffic generally goes up for any good forum. So if longer URLs "seemed" to give you more traffic, I am skeptical and would be interested to see more evidence about this.
4. What did Xenforo previously cut as "fluff words"? If this was "is, and, but"--there seems general consensus that Google does not search-phrase those words. Meanwhile, those words do contribute to the "maximum character count" for meta tags and link texts.
5. Spiders are stupid, but their programmers are only stoned. I have lost respect for the way Google filters searches... but... with thousands of IBP and VB forums now including SEO URLs, I expect Google someday will clamp down on the value of this method.
6. The ability to "change" might become the best reason to buy Xenforo. So perhaps we should think twice before saying anything is "too late to change." Maybe "embracing change" might become the best reason to buy Xenforo!
7. I like that Xenforo does not put a question mark (?) in the URL. Please note that although Vbulletin is bigger than IPB, the IPB pages all have much higher Google page ranks. Perhaps partly because IPB has dropped the question mark. The question mark is an obvious "yellow flag" for spiders not to dig deep.
8. Fast Fluff Filter: perhaps allow each forum owner to choose from a "niche" category, to give priority to the most searched terms in that niche. This would prevent the common SEO problem of everyone doing exactly the same thing. (Also if desired, after minimal effort on automatic fluff-free URLs, each forum owner focus on manual momentum-building...)
9. My favorite, as already mentioned: just have a separate "subtitle" field for new threads. I.e., make the "title" field that creates the URL always rather short. But, allow a rather longer area for a "summary." Both of these can show up in the same line in the discussion list, just as if they were one "title" statement. Meanwhile this solves two ubiquitous problems. (a) URLs will automatically tend to be short and to the point. (b) But at the same time, threads will tend to stop having uselessly short titles such as "please help" or "see this." Members will be forced to fill in the "summary" field where hopefully they will think more about saying what it is they are talking about.

(Feb. 14, 2011. Since it seems people are still reading this thread, I have edited this Nov. 2010 post for brevity and clarity.)

 

[Ryan Kent]

I am not normally one to make an off-topic post but I wanted to share how enjoyable it has been reading this discussion. I am new here and find it very pleasant to see matters discussed on these forums so thoroughly, with such passion by all sides. This thread has remained on topic, not a single insult has been shared despite sharply opposing views, it's simply wonderful to see. Any company that attracts this type of discussion regarding their product will surely end up with the best product on the market.

 

[Business Coach]

I suppose a dot looks round and nice - maybe warm and cuddly.

definitely because they are warm and cuddly

 

[Jarod]

I still think the URLs should be customisable, but maybe I'm wrong.

Yes like Wordpress

 

[DaveS]

I still think the URLs should be customisable, but maybe I'm wrong.

nothing wrong with custom.

in fact, why not use cookies to hide all unessc junk? all that stuff can be stored
in cookies, while not showing anything to the url surfer or search engine....

as long as the cookie knows what id-24 stands for, then why show it to the user or SE at all?

isnt that possible? and even if not using cookies, then use something that the
forum would understand thus not showing anything in the url not needed.

 

[dutchbb]

You need the id # in the URL, as there will be a conflict with two identical URLs. Let's say someone on another website links to a thread here http://xenforo.com/community/threads/iphone-4S-released , a day later another thread is created here with the same title. There is no way to send data to the old link on the other website to make it point to the original thread.

 

[mauzao9]

It's mostly down to ambiguity resolution. There are situations where you may not have an item to act on, and it's important to be able to resolve content vs action clearly.

Otherwise, we try to use the / as a drill-down (folder) sort of separator, so I'm not sure about type/title/id/action (or vice versa) approach.

Reasons:

1) People read left to right (well, we do in English). Therefore, better to see /threads/thread-title than /threads/{meaningless-number}-thread-title

2) I don't like the unnecessary appearance of directories, which /threads/1234/title would give you. To me, this suggests that there could be other content within the 1234 directory, which there isn't.

3) We use a dot because it's a prohibited character in our title->url conversion, and people are used to seeing files with an extension that they can safely ignore

4) If we separated the id from the title with a dash, you could end up with this: /threads/my-phone-number-is-0800-111-111-1234, which is clearly not good. Our URLs would represent that as /threads/my-phone-number-is-0800-111-111.1234, removing the ambiguity as well as possible.

Problem about this:
Why there is an ID in Profile LINKS? Since I know there can't be same names, nosense that.

I see a problem because:
When I want find a user I just can write it, like www.xenforoblabla.com/mauzao9 ... But with this we need to go to members, find that little search box and try to find the person to go to his profile!

Soo that's my question, what are IDs making in the member profile URL?

*sorry for the english*

 

[DaveS]

You need the id # in the URL, as there will be a conflict with two identical URLs. Let's say someone on another website links to a thread here http://xenforo.com/community/threads/iphone-4S-released , a day later another thread is created here with the same title. There is no way to send data to the old link on the other website to make it point to the original thread.

I guess all we can ask is make it good as possible.

I have seen urls in my time that would make me question humanity

 

[Kier]

Problem about this:
Why there is an ID in Profile LINKS? Since I know there can't be same names, nosense that.

I see a problem because:
When I want find a user I just can write it, like www.xenforoblabla.com/mauzao9 ... But with this we need to go to members, find that little search box and try to find the person to go to his profile!

Soo that's my question, what are IDs making in the member profile URL?

*sorry for the english*

Because different names can romanize to the same result.

Consider:

Username: Kier Darby
Profile URL with no ID: /members/kier-darby

Username: *Kier*-D'arby!!
Profile URL with no ID: /members/kier-darby

So which is which?

 

[mauzao9]

Because different names can romanize to the same result.

Consider:

Username: Kier Darby
Profile URL with no ID: /members/kier-darby

Username: *Kier*-D'arby!!
Profile URL with no ID: /members/kier-darby

So which is which?

It's madness... But I used some sites that can do that! We can go to the user profile like:
/home/!!.Marcus.!!
/home/,Gaame
/home/@enzo10enzo@

How to? I don't know... But I know it's possible. It's just know the User name, and it's easy to reach the profile!

 

[Fuhrmann]

When I want find a user I just can write it, like www.xenforoblabla.com/mauzao9 ... But with this we need to go to members, find that little search box and try to find the person to go to his profile!

Soo that's my question, what are IDs making in the member profile URL?

*sorry for the english*

You can use: http://xenforo.com/community/members/?username=mauzao9

 

[mauzao9]

You can use: http://xenforo.com/community/members/?username=mauzao9

That looks more easy, anyway maybe put an Member Search Box in Index may be more helpfull

 

[Paul B]

You can search for members from the main forum index.

Matched users are returned in the sidebar on the results page.

 

[agison]

It's madness... But I used some sites that can do that! We can go to the user profile like:
/home/!!.Marcus.!!
/home/,Gaame
/home/@enzo10enzo@

How to? I don't know... But I know it's possible. It's just know the User name, and it's easy to reach the profile!

I love this.
It should be something like www.domain.com/u/steves/