Urls like /memberlist.php could be shortened to /memberlist or even /members.
The forum we are in is named Development, but the url /forum-161.html doesn't exhibit that at all.
Private messages /private.php?action=read&pmid=1234
Profiles /user-1234.html
These are not very pretty and can be confusing. Also no good for seo. Plugins like Google SEO address this issue but regardless, url cleanup would be beneficial.
I'd like to say that this will happen, but haven't really looked into it too much yet. Frostschutz's Google SEO plugin does a fantastic job managing redirects and such, and the core would need to do the same thing. I would definitely like to add meta tags and a sitemap at the least, but URL changes throughout the core might end up taking a slower more phased approach.
Don‘t see a reason why anyone should use a plugin for this. This should‘ve been in the core for years.
Quote:These are not very pretty and can be confusing
How is memberlist.php confusing? And while you don't deem it "pretty" I don't see why that's important.
Quote: Also no good for seo.
Not really true. Dynamic URLs don't hurt MyBB forum rankings. While there some things that can be done to improve SEO using mod_rewrite isn't necessarily one of them.
What happens when a site is using Nginx to serve instead of Apache? And what about plugin compatibility?
Then you have issues with duplicate content if you have an existing forum under dynamic URLs.
There is an existing plugin which functions very well. Not sure that MyBB needs to do much for this imho.
If I recall, and I posted a link around here somewhere or on Discord, but. The things which confuse Googlebot are pagination and infinite calendars. Also, they like URLs to be user friendly, but generating a slug for a URL and simply renaming .php to .html or snipping the bit at the end are completely different things.
You *could* argue that you'd improve security by hiding the fact that you're running PHP, but bots will usually try PHP based exploits anyway.
Quote:The things which confuse Googlebot are pagination and infinite calendars.
Calendar should be added as a Disallow to robots.txt. The pagination does not confuse Googlebot. Other links should be nofollow or a Canonical meta tag should be used.
The move to using an actual router in 1.10 will allow this to be implemented a lot easier and cleaner than previously done before. Like Euan said though moving to a router is going to be a hefty task and will take time to move the entire base to a router and controller based system.
Quote:The pagination does not confuse Googlebot.
I'm mostly just citing Google's recommendations, the thing's ridiculously advanced, so it probably can take a lot, but it probably doesn't hurt to improve things where possible. That said, they're always making improvements to the bot.
(2017-12-14, 02:16 PM)Azah Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:The pagination does not confuse Googlebot.
I'm mostly just citing Google's recommendations, the thing's ridiculously advanced, so it probably can take a lot, but it probably doesn't hurt to improve things where possible. That said, they're always making improvements to the bot.
https://moz.com/blog/seo-guide-to-google...pagination
That's why you use Canonical, no follow, and set unique meta tags for each page.
There's pagination and then there's pagination.
It's a difference if it's a news article (the entire thing one coherent unit from introduction to conclusion) that was split into pages for whatever reasons, with only very few pages in total... or if it's a forum thread, sometimes with hundreds of pages, where whatever discussion going on on page 100 has zero relation to what started it at page 1.
In a news article you might want to point people to the first page so they get the whole picture, in a forum most people don't take the time to read the first 100 pages of any given thread. If a solution to a particular problem was posted on page 15, you want people to reach page 15 through Google and not page 1. Forum discussions tend to involve a plethora of authors that stray and go off topic alot, so thread pages have a lot less relation to one another, than pages of a single news article or review written by a single author.
In any case, with GoogleSEO style URLs there is a ?page=x parameter that couldn't be more obvious, and even if you follow a post link canonical is still set to ?page=x, so no additional hints should be required.