Ability to remove ID's from forums

[Iestyn]

One thing I'd love to see is the ability to remove the ID's from the forums and category URL's =] Who else would like to see this done?

[Nuclear General]

That would not be possible at all because the ID is what tells the board what to do and where to go. That ID is a must or the board would not work.

[Mark]

That would not be possible at all because the ID is what tells the board what to do and where to go. That ID is a must or the board would not work.

Well we could just allow the admin to specify a key which would be used, kind of like we do in IP.Content.

[ZackL]

Or just send the id as an http post(instead of an http get)?

Or a key like what Mark said.

[Amy T]

I like the idea. The key option sounds like what wordpress does with the permlink settings.

[bfarber]

Or just send the id as an http post(instead of an http get)?

Or a key like what Mark said.

That would mean you could never link to a forum. Sounds like a horrible idea to me. ;)


However, as only administrators can define forum/category names in the ACP, it would be possible to let them define a static "key" for the forum/category URL, and just give an error if they try to use a duplicate one.

[Iestyn]

Personally I think it would be a nice idea, as people don't really want to see the forum ID's. It's a bit of usless information really, there must be some way to get around this. It does look a bit odd having the ID in there IMO. They dont even tally up, the first ID on the first forum of mine is '33' and the second forum has an ID of '36' and the third has an ID of '68'.

It wouldnt be too bad if we could put them all in order if you get me like 1,2,3 etc.

Anymore views and opinions on this?

[Wolfie]

It wouldnt be too bad if we could put them all in order if you get me like 1,2,3 etc.

Anymore views and opinions on this?

Yeah, how would that work? Either you'd have to keep the forums in the order they were created, or you'd have to have a tool that will resort the forums (numerically) throughout the entire database, which can then cause problems if it's interrupted or something else goes wrong. That's just a purely cosmetic thing that doesn't really matter.

[Nuclear General]

I'd rather have the IDs in the URL then specifying a "special character" for the forum or topic or treating them numerically.

[bfarber]

Personally I think it would be a nice idea, as people don't really want to see the forum ID's. It's a bit of usless information really, there must be some way to get around this. It does look a bit odd having the ID in there IMO. They dont even tally up, the first ID on the first forum of mine is '33' and the second forum has an ID of '36' and the third has an ID of '68'.

It wouldnt be too bad if we could put them all in order if you get me like 1,2,3 etc.

Anymore views and opinions on this?

That's simply due to mysql autoincrement. A determined person could write a script to "fix" that, but it's really not worth the hassle.

[nrep]

I like the idea of defining a key for each forum for friendly URLs. That would be a huge plus :)

[Jaggi]

i see no problem in this as the id in the url isn't really a big issue and half the people don't even know its a id. Of course where does it stop, next would be hide ids for posts/topics. Not too keen on it myself and its such a small issue i dont' see the point in it.

[Nuclear General]

I like the idea of defining a key for each forum for friendly URLs. That would be a huge plus :)

What if you run out of "special keys" to use for forums or topics? Then you'd have a small or big predicament going on, and that wouldn't be worth it honestly. I'd rather use IDs because they're more fitting than special keys and looks better to me.

[bfarber]

He's not referring to forums and topics - JUST forums. Very few sites have enough forums that they wouldn't be able to have a unique key for the forums.

For the record, IP.Content supports this with databases/articles in 2.0. You define the friendly URLs for categories, and each record has a dynamic FURL, but you can override it with a statically set one in the ACP. While I couldn't see us implementing this static FURL concept for topics (I don't think most sites would bother using it, as it would be too much work), I can see how it would be useful for forums specifically.

[Iestyn]

I'd love to see this added, another forum system i used to use didnt have the ID's there

[FinalFrame]

Like this?

http://postingtogether.com/forum-name

Or:

http://postingtogether.com/forum/forum-name

Hopefully the first one.

[EDITalk]

Maybe I am crazy, but I know vB using something like this:

http://www.website.com/website-info/123456-i-think-site-is-great.html

Is this what the OP is asking for?

[bfarber]

The OP is asking for the ability to remove the forum id in forum urls.

Instead of

http://community.invisionpower.com/forum/1-company-news-and-updates/

he would like

http://community.invisionpower.com/forum/company-news-and-updates/

[EDITalk]

The OP is asking for the ability to remove the forum id in forum urls.

Instead of

http://community.invisionpower.com/forum/1-company-news-and-updates/

he would like

http://community.invisionpower.com/forum/company-news-and-updates/

Ah okay now I understand. I don't really notice that number much haha. :P