[Forum] Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs => Friendlier URLs?

[vhf27vh]

Hey, was looking at the Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs => .htaccess that some doofus decided to close, despite it being stickied now, and I'm curious about a couple of things:

I've been looking at VBSEO and though the feature comparison to vBulletin 4 looks pretty impressive at first glance, the worry about compatibility with mods and the hugely larger server load people speak of don't sound good at all: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread66504.html

My question is, in vBulletin 4 in the Friendly URLs options, is there any way (or does the vBulletin team plan to implement in the future any way) to customise the friendly URLs a bit more?

The current "best" one is the mod rewrite one like I mentioned in the first paragraph, but all that gives you is "threads/1234-Thread-Title" - it would be great if we could customise the "threads" bit to be the name of the subforum it's in, for greater search engine visibility, or an option to remove the "threads/" bit from the URL entirely and just have "yourforum.com/1234-threadtitle".

I'm aware that I could edit the htaccess to redirect outside links going in, but the forum itself would still be linking to the incorrect URLs which would make it rather pointless.


Another thing that could be good is making the links that users' can get when they click for permalinks on individual posts very short ones, e.g. those ones to send to others or twitter would just be yourdomain.com/1234 (thread ID number) as well as maybe optional bit.ly conversion for longer domain names

[kmohamed]

thanx for the thread waiting to hear from the vbteam

[anthonyparsons]

I believe the thread was closed because the discussion is about a custom URL rewrite which more people were having issues with than good with. The official .htaccess is contained within the package download and works perfectly. People are getting confused with what rewrite rules are what and which to use.

Steve posted as the last post on closing it:

The current .htaccess files in the vB zip file do work for the majority of situations. If you wish to discuss this custom .htaccess file (which by the way caused white pages on my vB4 test forum) please do so over at the vB mod site.: www.vbulletin.org

[vhf27vh]

Yeah, the thing is that they have stickied the post, it's rather conflicting.
An official thread on htaccess should probably be made to replace it and sticky that, or this even

Anyhow my questions still stand

[kmohamed]

so, what is the the best option in term of seo friendly
please help me out

[anthonyparsons]

The default .htaccess contained in the "do not upload" folder of the downloaded package.

[Ace]

the worry about compatibility with mods and the hugely larger server load people speak of don't sound good at all: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread66504.html

That thread is from 2007... things have certainly changed, code-wise since then, and the added load is really only a problem for a server that is close to being overloaded anyway.

(The latest post can be found on multiple forums in varying forms. Unhappy customer who felt that he alone should be allowed to avoid the part of the TOU that says that your license must be active to be transferred.)

[smirkley]

The official .htaccess is contained within the package download and works perfectly.

I can appreciate that, and I am severely appreciative of vB offering a modrewrite feature.


But,.. I operate on a fairly common server setup, and I have yet to be able to make the out-of-the-box setup work without causing a 500 server error.

Granted I did get it to work via some creative modification, of which vB is aware of in a former support ticket I have submitted, but I suspect somewhere within the next rev update or two I will be opening a new support ticket so vB can help me get to where I can utilize the out-of-the-box solution.

This is my preference as I have decided to operate my forums as close to OEM as possible.

(Pending a rev change on the htaccess file that is, of course.)

[obmob]

I thought that Mod Rewrite Friendly URLs was the official one... hmm, will test now, cause that one is killing my spanish based urls, hope that one works better.

[ashley76]

If you can get the one in the "do not upload" folder to work, then more power to you. I can't get either to work and the php files in the url's are absolutely maddening!

[anthonyparsons]

You should always look at mods & plugins if you have them installed. Return your vb to a default state, being style and disable all plugins and products not vb created, then test. If your mod_rewrite is not then working, you have an issue on your server which you need take up with the host, ie. something is not installed to allow mod_rewrite to work.

[obmob]

Well, I made it work, but it will need some rework, it doesnt get rid of special characters, only english is considered, and if you use áéíóú¡¿ñ etc... well, rss is messed up and you can't validate the source.

[anthonyparsons]

You should look upon http://www.vbenterprisetranslator.com for language specific mod_rewrite aspects, as they are the specialist site for translated versions of vbulletin and have an area for mod_rewrite directives in other languages.

[vhf27vh]

Thread hijack much...

[obmob]

You should look upon http://www.vbenterprisetranslator.com for language specific mod_rewrite aspects, as they are the specialist site for translated versions of vbulletin and have an area for mod_rewrite directives in other languages.

thanks, i'll take a look