We are pleased to announce that our URLs have been on an extensive diet and exercise program which has had some amazing results! They've lost a lot of weight

/action/view_profile/user/ross has managed to become /profile/ross a loss of 17 characters
/board/general/page/3 has managed to become /general/p2 a loss of 10 characters
/board/general/topic/30464/action/view_topic/subject-key-words/page/2 has managed to become /general/30464/subject-key-words/p2 a loss of an amazing 34 characters!

We're very proud of the work all these URLs have done over the past few weeks.

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For those of you who are not quite sure what that was all about - we have cut down the length of URLs used on user forums.

This has been part of our latest set of features which was rolled out earlier today. As well as these shorter URLs we have fixed a number of minor bugs and have added some extra javascript variables in the header to help coders.

These shorter URLs are entirely optional. We have enabled them be default for all new forums as well as any forums which currently have less than 20 topics or 3 members. To enable/disable this feature just go to your admin panel, choose "SEO Settings" and change the "Short URLs" setting.
Some codes may need adjusting in order to work with these new URLs. When enabled, URLs will redirect from the old (long) version to the new (short) version.

Enjoy!
Ross
vForums Staff

Awesome!! Easier to remember now!

I see what you did, it was in /name/value pairs but now just /value

I still don't like topic urls though, too complex for scripting

Posted By Aiken on 4th Mar 10 at 5:29pm

 

I see what you did, it was in /name/value pairs but now just /value

I still don't like topic urls though, too complex for scripting

There's no real need to use the URLs for scripting. New variables in the header enable you to check if you're on the view topic page by just using:

if(vf_action == 'view_topic') {
alert('You are viewing a topic!');
}

And getting the topic ID isn't that hard - it's the first number sandwiched between two forward slashes (unless the board ID is numeric but lets not go there....).

Basically, we've made them as short and simple as we can without compromising on functionality (particularly for the search engines)

So I have a question. When having a table and part of it is a quick link table, do you have to give the full URL in the table? or can you just add something like <a href="/news">News</a> and it will automatically fill in the rest of the url? Because <a href="action/board/news">News</a> would take you to the board. I have not tested it out yet, just wandering if it's the same or not.

yea that is a very good question, what if a board of category are using the same ID I tend to do it a lot actually, use an id for a category and then use it again for a board that uses the same name, and i can see where it might cause a looping problem

Edit: DM@ I know that if you use the full url context, it will redirect to the short url, providing the short url is active, so i'd assume that the short url would redirect to the long url as well.

Long URLs redirect to their short version. But not the other way around. When entering links you should always provide the full final URL rather than linking to a URL which then redirects to the final one.

Categories don't use these shorter URLs for the reason you mentioned. They're still /category/category-id

Well I mean linking to a topic, like in a additional profile option

Aiken@ yea maybe a little, but at least they are easier now, plus it helps getting in the habit of copy and pasting the url you need, its a great time saver

Ross@ Ok I assume by final you mean using a long url in the long setting and a short url in the short setting instead of the redirected form. Also thats good to hear the categories are the same, maybe in time a way to shorten th categories can be done too.

Yeah, copy/paste, but is would be easier without the topic title needed in the url

The topic title isn't needed, based on the tests that I just ran on my forum.

Posted By Aiken on 5th Mar 10 at 5:55pm

 

Yeah, copy/paste, but is would be easier without the topic title needed in the url

The subject is just there for the search engines. When used correctly it means you get keyword rich URLs - something which has been working well on a some of our forums. But as Wrighty says, it's not 100% necessary to include it in the link.

Like is this way my saved passwords for forums don't work

Posted By CåñåÐå™ on 6th Mar 10 at 2:45am

 

Like is this way my saved passwords for forums don't work

Shouldn't be, this doesn't change the domain that is being used, just the subURL that is being used.

mmmm

For some reason my saved password in FF3 only worked here , on all other forums it didn't i had to fill them out all over again

Posted By CåñåÐå™ on 7th Mar 10 at 7:37pm

 

mmmm

For some reason my saved password in FF3 only worked here , on all other forums it didn't i had to fill them out all over again

If the URL for these forums in question was forum.virtualforums.co.uk then that would be the reason. As the follow up to our new domains, any forums which had not already changed the setting have had it changed for them (using vforums.co.uk as the default).

I'm liking this new weight loss program.

Maybe you should try it for yourself, Ross.

Good work guys I think this is a great idea.

Posted By Ross on 7th Mar 10 at 8:23pm

 

Posted By CåñåÐå™ on 7th Mar 10 at 7:37pm

 

mmmm

For some reason my saved password in FF3 only worked here , on all other forums it didn't i had to fill them out all over again

If the URL for these forums in question was forum.virtualforums.co.uk then that would be the reason. As the follow up to our new domains, any forums which had not already changed the setting have had it changed for them (using vforums.co.uk as the default).

Ah ok yeah i think they were .

I understand now thanks Ross.