[RFC] Human Readable URLs

[Erik Frèrejean]

I support viewtopic.php?p=240415#p240415, half-solutions I'd rather not do.

The problem with that is that it requires that the server supports mod_rewrite.

It should be made in such a way that it gracefully falls back to the current behavior if you don't have mod_rewrite or don't need this type of fanciness.

[brunoais]

I support viewtopic.php?p=240415#p240415, half-solutions I'd rather not do.

The problem with that is that it requires that the server supports mod_rewrite.

It should be made in such a way that it gracefully falls back to the current behavior if you don't have mod_rewrite or don't need this type of fanciness.

That's impossible. We don't have such directory.
Also, in order to test this you need to make a try and check if fails, script. You cannot have a fallback. There's just no way (AFAIK)

[imkingdavid]

What he means is there needs to be a way to disable the new URL structure to fallback on the current, e.g. viewtopic.php?t=14 instead of /t14-my-topic/ Obviously without mod_rewrite, trying to access the latter will not work, but links should be changed at runtime based on the URL setting that would be added.

[DavidIQ]

Maybe there's a way to detect URL rewriting capabilities at rendering time perhaps via a configuration setting. Yes yes...more options BUT there's really not a good way to detect for URL rewriting capabilities for all server types. IIS7 has a URLRewrite module that can be added and mod_rewrite is available for Apache but then there's IIS6 which has a third party plugin that can be added, and so on so forth.

[brunoais]

What he means is there needs to be a way to disable the new URL structure to fallback on the current, e.g. viewtopic.php?t=14 instead of /t14-my-topic/ Obviously without mod_rewrite, trying to access the latter will not work, but links should be changed at runtime based on the URL setting that would be added.

Oh! Making apache/IIS/etc... add an extra GET variable to show that mod_rewrite is available?

[Erik Frèrejean]

What he means is there needs to be a way to disable the new URL structure to fallback on the current, e.g. viewtopic.php?t=14 instead of /t14-my-topic/ Obviously without mod_rewrite, trying to access the latter will not work, but links should be changed at runtime based on the URL setting that would be added.

Oh! Making apache/IIS/etc... add an extra GET variable to show that mod_rewrite is available?

Either that, but most likely you can define the rewrite rules in such a way that they "create" the exact same URLs as you would get when this is turned off. So this should be able to implement seamlessly without dirty is_mod_rewrite=true hacks.

[callumacrae]

Maybe there's a way to detect URL rewriting capabilities at rendering time perhaps via a configuration setting. Yes yes...more options BUT there's really not a good way to detect for URL rewriting capabilities for all server types. IIS7 has a URLRewrite module that can be added and mod_rewrite is available for Apache but then there's IIS6 which has a third party plugin that can be added, and so on so forth.

+1 for on install, but -1 for everywhere else. It's impossible to detect every method.

[Oleg]

On the incoming side the detection is automatic. If there is anything in PATH_INFO (-ish) then the url is assumed to be a seo url and the code proceeds accordingly.

On the generating side the code has to know whether to generate seo urls or not. A safe solution is to have a toggle in config.php that people can change when they e.g. move servers.

There is also no need to guess here, anyone can review how this is done in any of competing bulletin boards.

[DavidIQ]

Maybe there's a way to detect URL rewriting capabilities at rendering time perhaps via a configuration setting. Yes yes...more options BUT there's really not a good way to detect for URL rewriting capabilities for all server types. IIS7 has a URLRewrite module that can be added and mod_rewrite is available for Apache but then there's IIS6 which has a third party plugin that can be added, and so on so forth.

+1 for on install, but -1 for everywhere else. It's impossible to detect every method.

Yes...that's why I said to add a configuration setting

[bantu]

On the generating side the code has to know whether to generate seo urls or not. A safe solution is to have a toggle in config.php that people can change when they e.g. move servers.

The problem here is that there is no way back. Once you have mod_rewrite, you will always need it, because "good URLs do not change" (another SEO rule as far as I know). As such I'd argue this feature should be an optional extension.