User-Friendly Links (alias prettylinks, alias SEO friendly links) in PhpBB?

[DanielGarneau]

Hello,

I spent a lot of time this week trying to find out if I could implement pretty-links to my PhpBB forum. I was willing to upgrade from my current PhpBB 3.1.10 to the newer 3.2.2 version, but as I read on and on, it seemed that there are no plans at all to make this possible through plugin or otherwise. Is this so? Thank you!

 

[LeadCrow]

If you mean 'friendly urls', there's an addon with that functionalty.

From https://github.com/tas2580/seourls :
/viewforum.php?f=1 becomes /forum-title-f1/
/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2 becomes /forum-title-f1/topic-title-t2.html

 

[DanielGarneau]

If you mean 'friendly urls', there's an addon with that functionalty.

From https://github.com/tas2580/seourls :
/viewforum.php?f=1 becomes /forum-title-f1/
/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2 becomes /forum-title-f1/topic-title-t2.html

Yes thank you, that's what I mean.

 

[DanielGarneau]

LeadCrow, I activated - on a testing environment - the tas2580/seourls extension and adjusted the .htaccess file according to their instructions, and everything seems to work just fine. One area of concern was that if someone clicked on the old URL he would not be led to a broken link. Well, I tested this, and found no problem. Old links are still available. So again thank you.

 

[DanielGarneau]

It is a bit difficult to find information on the subject of what is called SEO Friendly URLs or what I prefer calling Human readable URLs. Some advices invite to stay away from this, under phpbb, because it would supposedly create more issues than it would solve. The warnings I found are not very specific and also some of them were posted a few years back, and not directed against the TAS 2580 SEO URLs extension per say, I am wondering if I should go that route or not.

Any thoughts on this general warning? Should it stop me from implementing «human readable URLs» on my live site or should I just ignore them as obsolete?

Related to the above, one reason I understand to not be activating the tas2580-seourls extension on my live site is based on compatibility between the way this plug-in implements its URL rewriting vs the way it would be performed by another board-software if I chose to move from PhpBB to XenForo, for example.

Would the above be a legitimate reason for delaying the implementing of human readable URL until I have determined that I will not move-on from PhpBB?

Expanding on the above, people linking to my current «ugly» URL will not find these links to be broken after I activate the tas2580-seourls extension, I tested it. What about people linking to the «human readable» URLs created through the TAS 2580 SEO URLs extension? Will they hit a broken link if I move to a different software extension or to a different board software? One that does not follow the exact same rules in its rewriting the URLs, such as seems to be the case now between the resulting friendly links produced by TAS 2580 SEO URLs extension and those produced by XenForo?

Thank you to anyone responding to this post. Also, be assured that I intend to write a follow-up here if I find answers to these from other means than TAZ.

 

[radu81]

To be honest it doesn't bother me to use a forum software without pretty urls. SMF/Elkarte does not have pretty urls into the core. Youtube also has no pretty urls.

Some advices invite to stay away from this, under phpbb, because it would supposedly create more issues than it would solve.

My experience with phpbb was very short so I cannot comment about phpbb and the related addon. In the past I used an addon for SMF and I had more headache than vantages. The forum became slower, the database bigger so I stoped using it. Today these problems seems solved on smf addon.
My suggestion is to install and use the addons you really need, it will save you time if you decide to switch to another forum software.

 

[JoyGoRound]

I really don't understand why phpBB doesn't support FURL's natively. Heck, it's 2018 now... not 1918.

I think it had something to do with not breaking the links if the titles were changed. So if they are assigned a number, they will always have that number.

 

[Meis@M]

Here you are phpBB SEO extension:
http://www.phpbb-seo.org/community/

 

[DanielGarneau]

Here you are phpBB SEO extension:
http://www.phpbb-seo.org/community/

This extension comes with a very interesting set of switches and .htacces ready-to-be-pasted code. It also seems to provide control on exactly what your url's will look like once it is activated. So that makes it really promising. In fact I am quite impressed with how it is built, from what I can judge, having activated it on my testing site.

However, the release I activated is identified as a beta version (2.0.0-b2), and it is specified not to use it on a live environment. Is anybody on this forum successfully using this extension on a live PhpBB 3.2.2 forum anyways? After all, two extensions identified as under development work well and hassle-free on my live forum.

Anyone comments anyone?

 

[CrazyTech]

I'm wondering about phpBB 3.2.2 support as well. I know it's 2018 and pretty URLs aren't the end-all-be-all that they once were for forums, but they still seem relevant and help users navigate links. I'm thinking of trying this out with my 3.2.2 board just to see what happens if there are no alternatives.

 

[F-Ribs & Sibs]

I've come to the conclusion all google wants is quality content and regular updates to the sites.