SEF/SEO URLs

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Lumpy Burgertushie
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

first , you quoted me out of context above the particular url I was referring to was this one:
'viewtopic.php?f=64&p=13015808
topic/seo-urls-7


second, I have no idea what "rickroll" is.

and third, your examples would not really be more than a handful of people compared to the total number of people online in any given hour or minute.
that is not a fair example.

I personally don't care if this is changed or not. Like I said, I rarely even look at a url except when I am helping out phpbb users here and only when I need to help them solve their problems.

Most of the people that have brought this subject up around here have done so thinking that this is needed for SEO.
It is rarely brought up for any other reason. I still maintain that most people do not know or care about this for usability reasons. I don't deny that there are situations where it could help. I never did, I only was talking about what I believe to be the majority of users.

anyway, I'm out, got other stuff to do.
have fun.

robert

EDIT: I forgot to ask. Did FF bring the status bar back? How many people were on the petition? 10, 20 1000?
have to be a lot more than that before FF would probably even notice.

I don't use FF4 yet so I have no idea.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Pony99CA »

Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:first , you quoted me out of context above the particular url I was referring to was this one:
'viewtopic.php?f=64&p=13015808
topic/seo-urls-7
I thought those were two URLs that you were comparing. However, even if you have to make the URL longer to have readable URLs, it might still help some people. I'm a person who hovers over the URL to see where it leads.

Also, I absolutely despise the viewtopic.php URLs that people post here. It means that I have to visit the topic to see if it's useful. That's why I always use the longer form URL tags and put descriptive text in the tags. I'm lazy, but not that lazy. My presumption is that every second that I save in posting is at least one second a reader wastes in reading. Multiply that by the number of readers in a topic and I feel that it's just selfish to post "naked" URLs in all but the most obvious circumstances (http://www.google.com, for example). (That's also why I try to properly capitalize and punctuate my posts. It assists the readers.)

However, I realize that other people don't subscribe to my philosophy. For those who don't, human-readable URLs would make life more pleasant for me as a reader. :)
Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:second, I have no idea what "rickroll" is.
It's too bad that there's not some tool that can help search the Internet. :D
Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:and third, your examples would not really be more than a handful of people compared to the total number of people online in any given hour or minute.
that is not a fair example.
Possibly, but by the logic, accessibility isn't necessary, either. It only helps a relatively small population of the Internet with miminal benefit for most people.
Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:Most of the people that have brought this subject up around here have done so thinking that this is needed for SEO.
I won't claim that it's "necessary" because I have no idea. However, I can certainly believe that it could give a slight boost to your SERP that might be useful in certain competitive spaces.

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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Lumpy Burgertushie »

Pony99CA wrote:
Lumpy Burgertushie wrote:first , you quoted me out of context above the particular url I was referring to was this one:
'viewtopic.php?f=64&p=13015808
topic/seo-urls-7
I thought those were two URLs that you were comparing. However, even if you have to make the URL longer to have readable URLs, it might still help some people. I'm a person who hovers over the URL to see where it leads.

snip..
part of the confusion about that is because someone earlier quoted me as having used that example. that was not mine it was someone else's example. I was replying to it as not being a very good example because adding some type of unique id/number to a "pretty" url puts it right back to what we have not basically.

robert
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Pony99CA »

To get things back on track, I'd be happy if URLs just added the topic title (or post title for post links or forum title for forum links) to the end of the URL.

For example, the URL for this topic is:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2100309

I'd be happy if it were:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2100309&title=SEF_SEO_URLs

where the &title=SEF_SEO_URLs piece was completely optional/useless.

Would that be friendly enough for most people? It would be harder to type, so it might not meet the needs for printed material, but I'm not so worried about that. Would it meet the needs of the SEO people? That I don't know.

I suspect that could be implemented in very little time.

To make URLs more typist-friendly, allow the title attribute to have semantics if used alone. For example, if somebody just entered:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?title=SEF_SEO_URLs

you could call the search engine for those words (for topics; forums would need a different search, maybe a SQL query). If only one topic/forum were found, it would be displayed, otherwise the search results would be displayed. (Posts are omitted as there's no viewpost.php. However, if the title attribute were changed to forum-title, topic-title and post-title, you could search for posts and just make the URL http://www.phpbb.com/community?topic-title=SEF_SEO_URLs.)

That would obviously be more work to implement, though (call it Phase 2).

Steve
Last edited by Pony99CA on Sat Jun 09, 2012 8:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by callumacrae »

Pony99CA wrote:To get things back on track, I'd be happy if URLs just added the topic title (or post title for post links or forum title for forum links) to the end of the URL.

For example, the URL for this topic is:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2100309

I'd be happy if it were:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2100309&title=SEF_SEO_URLs

where the 9&title=SEF_SEO_URLs piece was completely optional/useless.

Would that be friendly enough for most people? It would be harder to type, so it might not meet the needs for printed material, but I'm not so worried about that. Would it meet the needs of the SEO people? That I don't know.

I suspect that could be implemented in very little time.

It might even be possible to give it value. For example, if somebody just entered:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?title=SEF_SEO_URLs

you could call the search engine for those words (for topics; forums would need a different search, maybe a SQL query). If only one topic/forum were found, it would be displayed, otherwise the search results would be displayed. (Posts are omitted as there's no viewpost.php. However, if the title attribute were changed to forum-title, topic-title and post-title, you could search for posts and just make the URL http://www.phpbb.com/community?topic-title=SEF_SEO_URLs.)

That would obviously be more work to implement, though (call it Phase 2).

Steve
If you're going to stick it on the end, I think that it would be much better as /topic/2100309-sef-seo-urls
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by dandv »

Callum95 wrote:If you're going to stick it on the end, I think that it would be much better as /topic/2100309-sef-seo-urls
Yes. RESTful URLs. This topic would have a URL of phpbb.com/phpbb-discussion/sef-seo-urls. Generally, example.com/forum-title/thread-title[--uniquifier].
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by callumacrae »

dandv wrote:
Callum95 wrote:If you're going to stick it on the end, I think that it would be much better as /topic/2100309-sef-seo-urls
Yes. RESTful URLs. This topic would have a URL of phpbb.com/phpbb-discussion/sef-seo-urls. Generally, example.com/forum-title/thread-title[--uniquifier].
Yeah, I prefer it like that - just sticking the type onto the end of the URL seems hugely pointless, to me. It should either be the ID or a unique slug generated from the title, but not both.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Pony99CA »

Callum95 wrote: If you're going to stick it on the end, I think that it would be much better as /topic/2100309-sef-seo-urls
Of course it's going at the end. You can't very well put it at the beginning of the URL. :?

While your form may be preferable, it will be a lot more work. The whole point of my suggestion was to get the topic name in the URL for SEO (after all, that's what the topic is actually about, right?). My suggestion can probably be implemented in a day (basically replacing illegal characters in the title and appending it to the URL).

My suggestion also allows readers to see what the URL links to, which is reader-friendly. If you want user-friendly typable URLs, my suggestion is definitely worse than the status quo, but two out of three ain't bad. :)

If you want the "fake directory" style that you're asking for, you might want to ask Dog Cow if he could make his user-friendly URL changes into a MOD.

Anyway, the discussion about what these URLs should look like got locked and we were told to discuss that in Area 51's URL discussion.

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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by callumacrae »

Either would be very quick to impliment. One involves some changes to viewforum, the other involves some changes to viewforum, posting and a URL rewrite. Easily less than a days work.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Peter77sx »

It's a little more then simple edits..
I personally like the approach dcz came up with years ago... the wheel has been working nicely for a while now. If the team ever considered pretty URL's for phpbb, i'd wish it look much like his dedicated work.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Auridesion »

>.<

I only fully read the first and last page of this thread -- but I still got the general idea of the debate being had.

Personally... I don't really like "pretty" URLs for my board. Why? Because they make the URL longer. However, as far as whether or not they are more beneficial or somehow BETTER (as the OP seemed to want to continually insist on)... well, I couldn't help being reminded of the fact that I prefer Coke to Pepsi.

See, I love Coca Cola. I think it's infinitely better. The label is prettier. It tastes better. The bottles are more comfortable to hold. It tastes better. The name is sexier. It tastes better. But dang-it! There are still these weirdos out there who think Pepsi is better for some odd reason. They think Pepsi actually tastes/looks/feels better. And... I just don't get it. But, despite the fact that I love Coca Cola, I also believe that everyone should be able to have their own preferred tastes.

Is giving us an easy, non-MOD option for "pretty" URLs something that phpBB should consider? Sure, why not? But, if phpBB gave me this option out of the box... I wouldn't use it.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by dandv »

Auridesion wrote:I only fully read the first and last page of this thread -- but I still got the general idea of the debate being had.

[...]

I prefer Coke to Pepsi.
This is a weak analogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.php?page_id=12345). Just kidding, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_analogy.

There are no objective reasons to prefer Coke over Pepsi.

There a lot of objective reasons to prefer clean URLs, and if you don't have time to read the thread, just read this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_URL.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Auridesion »

@dandv

I certainly appreciate the benefits, and the whole debate over which is better. My comparison of Coke and Pepsi to "unclean" and "clean" URLs wasn't about objective reasons. My point was that, in the end, I think most of it comes down to preference.

I think "clean" URLs are definitely useful for a blog, or for any website that is based on presenting pages/articles. In fact, I use "pretty" URLs in the websites where I think it's more appropriate to structure it that way. However, within a discussion forum, I don't think it's really necessary -- and I even find it to be a bit tacky. Why? Well, that really just boils down to my personal preference as a web designer / website administrator.

Thus, I prefer Coke to Pepsi. ;D

But I definitely appreciate the point you illustrated for me, and I very much respect it. [/sincerity]
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Erik Frèrejean »

Auridesion wrote:I think "clean" URLs are definitely useful for a blog, or for any website that is based on presenting pages/articles. In fact, I use "pretty" URLs in the websites where I think it's more appropriate to structure it that way. However, within a discussion forum, I don't think it's really necessary -- and I even find it to be a bit tacky. Why? Well, that really just boils down to my personal preference as a web designer / website administrator.
Thanks for that, quoted because I could not agree more.
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Re: SEF/SEO URLs

Post by Qiaeru »

Here we see both sides and everyone with good arguments. You must understand that this feature is wished by many and has many benefits, but you must also understand that this feature is not crucial and the time spent on its integration is a waste of time to do something else more "useful" (even if every "useful" thing're not "useful" for everyone). But I think we should be able to choose to enable the clean URLs feature or not.

And with all due respect, I don't understand why it's more appropriate to a blog than a board, both have content and that content should be readily understood without clicking on the URL to read it. ;)
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