Add-on Add-on Pitch: Permalink Manager

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

So, I created a prototype to change the permalinks of the public facing routes. And you can change the URL structure of most of the parts of XenForo with this add-on.

For example, https://xenforo.com/community/forums/resource-and-add-on-discussions.63/ can be changed to https://xenforo.com/community/xenforo-resources-and-add-ons/resource-and-add-on-discussions and of course https://xenforo.com/community/xenforo-resources-and-add-ons/ will take you to the parent category for this forum.

and for a thread, https://xenforo.com/community/threads/resource-guidelines.83504/ can be changed to
https://xenforo.com/community/xenforo-resources-and-add-ons/resource-and-add-on-discussions/resource-guidelines

For a member, https://xenforo.com/community/members/mr-goodie2shoes.11736/ can be changed to https://xenforo.com/community/@mr-goodie2shoes

Of course you can control how the URLs will be structured, with as many options as possible, and this add-on can also be extended to support add-ons like XenForo Resource Manager, XenForo Media Gallery, Showcase, etc (Basically any add-on that has their own content_type (not related to XF's content_type table FYI ) thingy).

I just want to know if there are any interested parties before I proceed as this will a time consuming project.

P.S. You can also set the permalinks to go with your old vBSEO, DBSEO, IPB SEO permalinks so you wont have to worry about the redirects anymore. Though haven't checked them out yet.

P.P.S Yes, this will be a paid add-on

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

If you guys are wondering:


more images on the way!

 

[Daniel Hood]

I'm kind of wondering the difference between this and XenForo's default route filter. I might just be missing it but it seems to be very similar? No offense meant.

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

Firstly, you'll have to add every single routes to threads and members in AdminCP manually. That means, add the route /threads/add-on-pitch-permalink-manager.87115/ to a new route filter to change the permalink of the thread.
Secondly, XenForo preloads the route filters every time the public dependency class is called. Which wont be a good thing for your server if you have thousands of links.

This add-on uses a different mechanism to handle these permalinks and you can change the structure the way you want it just like how you do it in Wordpress (not a good example but would do...).

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

To make it a little clearer, let's say you want to change url for members' profiles,
if you set

/members/%user_group%/%username%

then the url generated will be:

/members/registered/mr-goodie2shoes
/members/registered/daniel-hood
/members/administrator/kier

and so on...

if you set something like

/%user_role%/%username%

the output will be:

/member/mr-goodie2shoes
/member/daniel-hood
/staff/kier

and so on...

 

[Daniel Hood]

Nice. I was just wondering it was different. Turns out it's very different, sounds like a good add on.

 

[TheBigK]

This would be fantastic addon for the forums that are just starting their journey. For us, changing the permalink structure would be a disaster.

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

Just a note: all the old links will still work, the users will be redirected with a 301 status header.

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

Here's a video demonstration of how this add-on changes the permalinks to user profile:

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Note:

• Mr. Goodie2Shoes
• Mr Goodie2Shoes
• Mr-Goodie2Shoes

are all unique user names, but the permalinks generated for these users will be the same (e.g. /members/mr-goodie2shoes). So what this add-on do is add suffixes to these permalinks:​

• /members/mr-goodie2shoes
• /members/mr-goodie2shoes-1
• /members/mr-goodie2shoes-2

and so on...​

 

[Alpha1]

Could someone highlight the SEO benefits or the practical benefits. The examples above are nice but are not appealing to me yet. Maybe there are some other uses?
I have used vbSEO and am still using NuSEO on vb but never used permalinks.

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

I built it with 'pretty links' in mind... not from SEO perspective, but I heard that Google likes hierarchical links...

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

Been a long time since I posted any updates. Still got some issues that I need to take care of...

Here's a 'demo' I made like a month ago after changing a lot of stuff:

The 'permalink_node_type_*' is a phrase and since it wasn't added at the time of screen casting the title was used to generate the permalinks

 

[Daniel-SP]

Any planned release date for this beauty? I know you have been busy with the Classifieds one.

Just taking advantage of the opportunity to post here, have you thought about addin a "accent cleaner" to the URL ? Since you are foccusing to beautify, this would be a must.

Characters like 'À','Á','Â','Ã','Ä','Å' for example are translated to %(numbers), like spaces to %20 and so.. This makes te URL too weird.

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

Any planned release date for this beauty?

I might give this project some time after my exams

have you thought about addin a "accent cleaner" to the URL ?

This has already been implemented ... I think ...

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

I have installed the latest alpha build on our demo board GFNClassifieds Demo Board
Here are some of the links generated by the add-on:

http://classifieds.gfn.ninja/demo/information/
http://classifieds.gfn.ninja/demo/temporary-support-forums/suggestions/
http://classifieds.gfn.ninja/demo/kintaro/
http://classifieds.gfn.ninja/demo/kintaro/threads/feedback-and-or-visible-in-the-user-info/
http://classifieds.gfn.ninja/demo/mr-goodie2shoes/
http://classifieds.gfn.ninja/demo/mr-goodie2shoes/threads/please-note/

 

[Mr. Goodie2Shoes]

Just took the bite after a number of testing and published the add-on: Beta - GoodForNothing Permalink