Miscellaneous Hacks - Friendlier URLs by BOP5

Current Version: 0.9 Beta

The purpose of this mod is to make "friendly" URLs in VB4 even better.

DO NOT USE IF YOU HAVE VBSEO - It should already do this.

Demo: Test Thread on Qapla.com

For SEO purposes it is often best that only standard English characters and numbers are in URLs.

If you have a forum where non-English languages are used and you have letters with accents or other symbols in them they would become part of the links to your threads and your site would be indexed like that. However when a user searches for something like "Jagermeister" they will usually type "Jagermeister" into the search and not the technically correct "J?germeister."

Previously in VB4 there was no way to convert ? to a automatically, or even to strip them from the URL altogether.

This mod adds those options. It has a built in translation table for the most commonly used accented characters. It also allows you to specify custom translations if there are additional letters you want to translate to their English/Latin equivalents.

It also includes a final option to simply strip (remove) any special characters it can't translate.

I am marking this Beta as I have tested it and run in on my own forum, www.qapla.com, but I have not tested it extensively.

You must have VB 4.1.10 or above for this to work, it will not work on older versions.

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Please "Mark as Installed" if you use this.
Donations always appreciated. :up:
Nominate MOTM if you LOVE it!

[sadiq6210]

Finally
Thanks .. this is great

I was using basic links and I converted the links to advance after I installed this great mod but there is two issue:

1- When I copy and past the link in any post, I is appearing again like this
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...7&d=1326552849

but there is no issue when I click on the link where I got the correct link.


2- If I enter any thread from the old basic link such as:
http://www.domain.com/forum/showthread.php?t=276953

The link is automatically converting to the advance link, but like this only:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...7&d=1326552849

[BirdOPrey5]

How are you copying and pasting the link in #1- what is your copy source? The browser address bar? Can you paste a link here using the [code] bb code?

3) When you say auto convert do you mean it changes in your address bar from the old basic to the new advanced before the page even loads?

[Morpheus NS]

Working great in live forum, I can finally sit down and relax, my links are fine without using an expensive solution like vBSEO... Is there any way to do the same thing in cms articles meta description?

[sadiq6210]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

How are you copying and pasting the link in #1- what is your copy source? The browser address bar? Can you paste a link here using the [code] bb code?

Also, when I copy the link and paste it here I face the same bug, like this:

http://www.domain.com/forum/showthread.php/223891-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AB-121

While when I copy it from the address bar it was as shown in the screen shot:

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

3) When you say auto convert do you mean it changes in your address bar from the old basic to the new advanced before the page even loads?

Yes, you can try to enter this link:
www.qapla.com/mods/showthread.php?t=139

You will notice that the link will change in your address bar to:
http://www.qapla.com/mods/showthread...-de-los-perros

In your forum it is perfect .. but in my forum (Arabic lang.) when I enter any thread using the old basic link, then It changes to the new advance link but only like this:

http://www.domain.com/forum/showthread.php/223891-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AB-121

It should be:

[BirdOPrey5]

Ah, In your Friendly URL settings (the built in ones) look at the Enforce Canonical URL options...

Turn it off (No) for registered users and Off for guests... The defaults are Yes and Standard.

[The Rocketeer]

This looks to be one great ad on BOP. Congrats. Voted and Nominated I currently have vBSEO Installed on both of the boards I own however if I ever stop using vBSEO I would definitely use this.

1 Question though, for those who are on a shared hosting plan, does this mod increase CPU load and take up a good amount of grunt like it vBSEO?

[BirdOPrey5]

No this is a very lightweight mod... I use it and I'm on shared hosting with no ill effects. It's really just a few lines of php code.

[Nirjonadda]

Its not working on my site in 4.1.10

[BirdOPrey5]

What is happening?

Can I get a link to your site?

[hostcini]

Amazing. There is no problem with Turkish chars. It's working at windows servers too (tested).