? in URL
 

Got sent over here from Colin F at vbulletin.com. Here's the question

What is up with every forum/thread/post etc in my site having a ? in the url? These ? make it impossible for most people to link to our site Here's an example: http://supermotojunkie.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

Any way to get rid of the ?

The question mark is necessary in your example for the forumdisplay script to know which forum to display.

There are some places where a lone ? will come up that can be elimiated at the expense of sessions, but in most cases, the ? must stay.

Yes, they are called url parameters and the php script takes these parameters and uses it in the script. In the specific case above, it takes the forumid parameter (f) to generate which forum to display.

Look into SEO or just simple URL Rewriting if you'd like to change it from this:

To:

It's not just that forum, its EVERYWHERE and apparently people can't have direct links because the ? mark.

acidburn, Thats exactly what I want. What is SEO and how would I go about rewriting all those urls? Thanks!

every direct link i've ever used with a ? has worked...

On some forums they set no dynamic urls for images. Is this the case?

tOTAL noob HERE.

I haven't done anything like that in the settings. Could you tell me where to go look... cp>???>???

Thank you!

Sorry to confuse you. It's not something you can control.

I thought that the problem may have been your members linking to attachments on your forum from other forums.

Well if you want something professional, you should try vBSEO.com (I hope I can post that, lol.) as it's arguably the best SEO software out there - and best supported. If you're looking for something free, then DChapman has released a Zoints SEO here at vB.org -- use the Search feature to find it.