Pretty URLS

onesoftindiana

I just installed vanilla forums
Now I see the very first discussion that is automatically generated. 'BAM! You’ve got a sweet forum'
I see that all discussion come with a url like -" http://gomilitary.in/Forum/discussion/1/bam-you-ve-got-a-sweet-forum"

Can I remove this 'discussion' and the no. i.e. '1' from the urls completely. If yes, how ? And does removing them have any effect on SEO .

vrijvlinder

No, what you are suggesting to do is ruin the address. The url is already prettified. Removing the "discussion" is like removing the zip code on the letter you want to mail. The number is the ID of the discussion. Removing it would be like removing the address number on a letter you were going to mail. In both cases the letter will be returned to sender from not finding the address.

hgtonight

Removing this would have no impact on SEO.

Note - The above claim cannot be proven true or false.

vrijvlinder

Specially if the discussion can't be found...

R_J

@onesoftindiana said:
Can I remove this 'discussion' and the no. i.e. '1' from the urls completely. If yes, how ? And does removing them have any effect on SEO .

If you remove the number you run into problems if two discussions have the same title like e.g. "Todays Horoscope"

onesoftindiana

@R_J said:
If you remove the number you run into problems if two discussions have the same title like e.g. "Todays Horoscope"

But the words 'discussions' and '1' simple increases the word length and as far as my limited knowledge goes, google return only a certain length of url in search result. So wouldn't it be better if instead of having these two words, i can simply have the url something like --
gomilitary.in/Forum/best-book-for-preparation
as opposed to gomilitary.in/Forum/discussions/2405/best-book-for-preparation
The first one looks clean too.
Please share your views..everyone..I'm new to vanilla.

vrijvlinder

The word discussions can be changed to anything you want, like chats or posts or anything but it has to be there to be able to find something specific.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-engine.htm

The id number of the discussions will increase as you post more and more. It is important to have if you want that specific discussion found.

Search engines don't care about the length of the url , it cares about the keywords in your metadata in the index.

Also keep in mind that the "discussions" is the application being targeted not just a title.

There is also "conversations" which is also an application within Vanilla.

The purpose of this is the need to organize things in such a way that they are easy to find later. The goal is to make it easy to find not harder to find.

onesoftindiana

Thank you everyone. It's going to be a great journey on vanilla forums with guys like you always ready to help.
Best Regards.
By the way is that an addon, the 'text editor' that has been implemented here with the option of attaching image.

vrijvlinder

It will be available sometime next year if we pray hard

Linc

@vrijvlinder said:
It will be available sometime next year if we pray hard

Oh yeah? https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/pull/2108