Url change from ?t=xxxx to viewtopic.php?f=xx&t=xxxx

[yazerty]

For google urls with parameters are unique urls. vt.php?f=2&t=256 is different that vt.php?t=256. Google will see 2 different urls that show the same content.

[code reader]

i guess i didnt clarify myself:
the fact that 2 different sets of parameters lead to the same content is not a problem.
consider this: every search in phpbb (or olympus), generates a url with "&hilit=zzzz". many different searches will lead to the same post, with a different "url". this is not a problem.

now, if you were to pepper your site with many of those links, then maybe google would get angry, but the mere fact that 2 different possible urls ultimately lead to the same content is not, and can not be a problem.
you can go to (almost) any page you want on the web and add to the url some "&junk=something" (or "?junk=something" if there aren't any params yet), and in > 99% of cases you will still get the exact same content.

and, actually, if you look at any phpbb/olympus thread, you will find in the title line of each post this little symbol: . for each post on any given page this has a different link, but all posts on the same page lead to the same content.

(OT: i just switched to recently release ff 2.0. awesome! i especially like the built-in multilingual spell-checker for input fields. this solves one of my few peeves with phpbb/olympus (no spellchecker). recommended.)

[Dark_Génova]

i don't believe that adding parameters ("&field=param") to the url is considered by google "different url".

Its considered by google as a different url, go look on referencing forums and you will see. Like : http://www.webrankinfo.com" target="_blank (french forum).

Two differents url who points on the same page is call "duplicat content" by google. Your website can be banned from the google search engine ... I think the developpement team should think of this.

@+ and thanks for your work phpbb team

[Eelke]

Many potential different URLs isn't really the problem, Google/<fill in your favourite search engine> finding them is.

So, what we should consider is the extent of this problem. It's mostly limited to links to topics/posts being themselves posted, I think. Should Google be able to get to a search results page (because someone posted a link to one (not even sure it's possible, because you would have to be able to pass search parameters through GET)), the problem would become somewhat bigger, I suppose, because any search would produce it's own set of duplicate URLs because of the highlight words. Unless Google also verifies the existing URLs it has, and doesn't only go by what it finds on the web, because then any existing site probably already has many duplicate URLs that will never expire (because they will continue to work).

If it's decided the problem is big enough to worry about, I think a good, elegant (and arguable also more "correct") solution would be to pass "circumstantial" parameters, such as the forum that was used to access the topic, or highlight words, as session variables. However, I would hazard a guess that that would be considered a feature request, because I think it involves some non-trivial code-changes.

[Handyman]

Hello,

I 've seen that posts' url changed.
phpbb2 : viewtopic.php?t=25613
phpbb3 : viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25613

If I 've understood, in phpbb 3 we could specify specific rules for a forum in particulary ? That 'd be pretty cool .

But what about the redirection of the old url to the new ones ? Via a .htaccess

Yes, it's done with .htaccess and mod_rewrite.

Right now I'm using URLs like this
forum/f=3-[Olympus]_Discussion.html
so far, it's working perfectly... I can't wait to see how google shows my forum

However, not everybody has mod_rewrite capabilities, so it's not a good idea for phpBB3 to do those instead.
I love how well thought out phpBB3 is