SEO and 'Friendly' URLs

[vord]

Friendly URLs can be great, but it's easy to mess up a site by changing them.

For people moving half a million posts from another version of forum software (let's say vB3 for example) the ideal would be to keep the URLs as they were. No way Google will re-index deeply buried stuff on most forums if the URLs are changed, and 301 redirects would be very server intensive on an existing forum.

Pre-written htaccess stuff to allow people to keep their existing URLs whatever software they migrated from might be a good selling point to anyone who has met an SEO. Easy enough to do if the thread number is in the URL (which it seems to be).

Is the dot in the 'friendly' URLs not a reserved character (used to denote file extensions)? Dangerous stuff - really ought to be using non-reserved characters there.

 

[NURV]

Surprised nobody has replied to this one yet.

I think the best solution would be to allow admins to customize the urls to match their current urls. This is far superior to a redirect script. Additionally, some admins prefer their urls to look a certain way. As a current vBSEO user, I'd love to see customization/optimization options in xF. It would definitely make my decision to switch much easier, as maintaining my current SEO standing is very important to me.

 

[Hoffi]

In all cases of not english forums, it is really imoportant for SEO to define some other ways to display the URL. for me it is enough if I can change the "controller" Part of the URL. Change forums to forum, thread to thema or something else. That's really a big point I am waiting for.

 

[Shockrift]

In all cases of not english forums, it is really imoportant for SEO to define some other ways to display the URL. for me it is enough if I can change the "controller" Part of the URL. Change forums to forum, thread to thema or something else. That's really a big point I am waiting for.

I agree, this is one lacking feature that prevents 2 of my clients from moving over to xenforo in its current iteration. (russian and greek)

Edit: This is a message I ran into here in the test forums: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/thử-thôi-xem-thế-nào.18701/ IE9 converts the characters %, chrome and firefox generally do well with it. but it's not pretty, not pretty at all.

 

[Carlos]

xenforo is packaged as an "ugly URL" with index.php? and a bunch of numbers. So, if you were on vB3, your url's should look the same.

The friendly URL is a toggle button away.