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View topic - [Forum URLs] Just a question...

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  • Joined: 16 May 2002
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[Forum URLs] Just a question...
Post Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:07 pm
Did you install the forum modification which alters the syntax of the forum URL? I noticed it since a couple of days ago...

Personally, I find it extremely confusing, can I ask why you did it? I saw this modification around several times on the phpBB2 mod websites since I administrate(d) some forums (especially in the past), but I never figured out its point so I never wanted to install it...

Fine print since I don't want to look like a bad guy: this isn't a complaint, at all, it's sincere curiosity. I find it confusing, but maybe I'm really missing the point here and I will be glad to admit it once you explain its usefulness. I'm not saying "you shouldn't have done that", I'm sincerely asking "should I install it on the forums I administrate? What is its purpose?"

Thanks in advance.
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:25 pm
I guess it's just to make topic links descriptive. And a bit of SEO maybe.
As long as all the old links keep on working, why not?
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:36 pm
SEO is nonsense, let's not be silly.

My motivations were:

- Make forum URLs feel a bit more like the rest of the site
- Make it easy to see what a URL goes to (once people start using them)
- Reduce duplicate URLs in Google results
- It seemed like a good idea at the time

It's just a cosmetic thing, no functionality has changed and old URLs still work.
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:50 pm
I have to admit I still have slight (irrational) discomfort with the new URLs but overall I am ok with them. To play devil's advocate a little,

"Make it easy to see what a URL goes to (once people start using them)"

I don't think it stands for much. Forums topics can say or mean everything, and links are often part of a context which matters more.

"Reduce duplicate URLs in Google results "

How is that reducing duplicate URLs? Do we have duplicate URL? Do they matter? If one thing, the change the URL perhaps affected Google results (but probably not in a way that matter either way).

What I care above all is that 10-20 years from now our data is still online and possibly links are valid (as opposed to every other sites or links on the internet which are going down after xx years). As long as we can guarantee that the forward/backward compatible change of link is ok. I guess my irrational discomfort comes from the fact that "ID" urls feels somehow robotic and reliable while fancy urls feels not. Of course in this case we are still using ID and the string is actually merely optional commentary, so it doesn't apply.
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:04 pm
I see, thank you.
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:07 pm
Yes, Google is still not very good at differentiating viewpost and viewtopic links to the same page, and before removing the links it would index "next topic" links that were relative to some other topic and no longer went to the indexed page. There is some penalty for having multiple URLs to the same content.

All this is always with the goal to avoid losing content in 20 years. The ids are still there, the data is still there. We could always remap if we did change forum software. (Speaking of which, 404.php is still broken...)
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Post Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:36 pm
Maxim wrote
SEO is nonsense, let's not be silly.
[...]
- Reduce duplicate URLs in Google results


Which is SEO. :P :P :P :D

(btw I meant SEO as in "let's make people find the SMSPower! contents they need more easily")
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