URL Rewriting MOD

[The Wizard]

All the sites/forums has one. And these days is a must.
Is better for search engines and for humans as well. You can easily read them, and it looks nice.
There are some rewriting mods, but a built-in mod would be great.
The name of the topic/subforum should be the url.

[Meis2M]

very good.
SEO in phpBB is perfect.

[GravityDK]

It raises a question: why not fold the phpBB-SEO advanced mode URL rewriting into phpBB core?

Alternatively, you could implement advanced mode with no user options, and then admins who require more options could use phpBB-SEO full version of advanced mode.

[onehundredandtwo]

There has already been plenty of discussion on this before.

IIRC the biggest issue was that HTTP referrers could be leaked to pages linked from any topic by the client, which could give private information away.

[callumacrae]

My main objection to this is that all the URL rewriting mods are, to put it bluntly, rubbish. Believe me I have tried, and they just mess other stuff up.

For example, if you have something non-phpbb installed in the same directory, it won't work.

~Callum

[GravityDK]

Not entirely true, I have wordpress and phpbb (they are installed in different directories, though) and use phpBB-SEO URL rewriting plus pretty permalinks on wordpress, AND caching rewrite rules from W3 Total Cache, and it works. The htaccess is in the root of my domain, which includes rules for all three.

I still maintain nice URLs are good, not for SEO so much, but usability: you can mouse-over a forum post link to see what the thread is about, before clicking it, from its URL.

[Rotsblok]

The major problem is with what you call the "nice" urls is that others think of them as horrendous? I for one dont like urls with for example: http://phpbb.com/community/help_forum/P ... t_internet

One then can suggest to crop it, but that makes it in my eyes even worse

I still maintain nice URLs are good, not for SEO so much, but usability: you can mouse-over a forum post link to see what the thread is about, before clicking it, from its URL.

Aren't sbujects the purpose of what you say here? So you say you want to look at the statusbar to see what the topic is about while the topic title shows you exact what the topic is about... Im sorry but to me that doesn't seem more user usability friendly....

[GravityDK]

I still maintain nice URLs are good, not for SEO so much, but usability: you can mouse-over a forum post link to see what the thread is about, before clicking it, from its URL.

Aren't sbujects the purpose of what you say here? So you say you want to look at the statusbar to see what the topic is about while the topic title shows you exact what the topic is about... Im sorry but to me that doesn't seem more user usability friendly....

You just misunderstood; I'm talking about a link in another thread, which goes to a post. Before you click-through, you can get information what the post is about.

[Ger]

It makes more sense to put such information in the title-attribute.

All in all: I think URL rewriting is just a case of personal preference. I for one don't care a bit about it. It doesn't do anything for SEO (really: it doesn't), it's just a matter of user friendlyness. Some people like it, others don't.

[Stoker]

It makes more sense to put such information in the title-attribute.

All in all: I think URL rewriting is just a case of personal preference. I for one don't care a bit about it. It doesn't do anything for SEO (really: it doesn't), it's just a matter of user friendlyness. Some people like it, others don't.

It DOES make a difference for SEO.
Search engines does take keywords in urls into consideration.
But off course, if the url rewrite is forum22.html it doesnt do any good.