Breadcrumb Accuracy and URL Consistency Needed ASAP

[esquire]

There are a couple of issues that have prevented me from making the move over, although Marcher has provided something of a fix for some of them. My entire thread covering some of what are show stopping issues for me for the Suite as a whole are here:

http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/378609-ipc-is-an-exercise-in-setup-frustration/

The problem stems from the fact that Forum is hitched together with gallery, blogs, members and calendar while IPC is not.

See: http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/369636-need-overview-of-ipcontent-development-methodology/?p=2366078

(1) Breadcrumbs are inconsistent and flat out "wrong" in various parts of IP Suite

If you install in the root, the problems are obvious:

- some apps will show the full path with the home page, others no home, just the app name

- In the forums, you'll get index in the forum home URL within a post with stock settings

(2) A need for URL consistency between applications.

If you look at IPC, it creates URLs with the article ID appended to the end of an article with a dash and a letter "r": article-name-here-r12345

- It also truncates the titles so that keywords will be split in half which is very bad, e.g. article-na-r123

- it does maintain the slug for the location, e.g. /articles/subject-name-here-r1234

If you look at IPB, it creates URLs with the article ID at the beginning: 1234-article-name-here

- not sure if it truncates them

- does not include forum in URL and changes to "topic" instead

--- I understand that convention is forum is for forum name but it does create unusual looking structure

[Aiwa]

I agree that the FURL structure is a little disjointed. To my knowledge IPS is working on that in 4.0 when each app can be run inside the core w/o the forum needed.

I just want to say that I like how the forum name / id is not in the topic FURL... I don't know that I agree it's 'unusual', but it is shorter and easier on the eyes. I understand the SEO argument and wanting the forum name/id there, but IMO it's useless clutter and duplicates the information already on the page.

It saves some headache if you move a topic between forums that was already indexed. You don't have to worry about redirects... It also makes a post easier to find if you just have the id... /topic/1234 instead of /forum-guessid/1234.

[esquire]

I agree that the FURL structure is a little disjointed. To my knowledge IPS is working on that in 4.0 when each app can be run inside the core w/o the forum needed.

I know that the world cannot stop for someone's request. But getting URL structure right the first time is the only way most of us can move over our content management system and forum. Some of those here are trying to keep their forums with the same URL as VBSEO so it won't affect them. But for everyone else who will undergo a URL change, you really only want to do that once. In addition, it's not feasible to use IPC and IPB together without a uniform URL structure. Any URL shortening will bork one of the two as I illustrated. In addition, for efficiency purposes you only want one.

Regarding the breadcrumbs - it's just not acceptable for a professional website to have basic navigation that doesn't work. I spent several days with Marcher's ingenious workaround recreating breadcrumbs and figuring out how you can rewrite them everywhere. Again, not a smack at the team but this is such a conspicuous part of your website, that even if search engines didn't care it certainly is something your users will care about if you're trying to show some polish.

I just want to say that I like how the forum name / id is not in the topic FURL... I don't know that I agree it's 'unusual', but it is shorter and easier on the eyes. I understand the SEO argument and wanting the forum name/id there, but IMO it's useless clutter and duplicates the information already on the page.

It saves some headache if you move a topic between forums that was already indexed. You don't have to worry about redirects... It also makes a post easier to find if you just have the id... /topic/1234 instead of /forum-guessid/1234.

I agree that FURLs are preference based but the URLs are no shorter. Look what I did at 8central and you'll see the FURLs there for the forum are easy to understand and clean. Everything goes into the /forum/ directory and threads are identified by the "t" identifier, the first in the thread. It may have been easier to do this at the end but I was just happy that it worked and I think it needs to be there at the beginning.

From a logic standpoint I don't know any software that changes the directory which the software appears to be in is a good thing, especially for humans. For example, if you installed IPS into the /forum/ directory, the forum would be mysite.com/forum/ as would all the URLs generated within - which makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is to install to the root, have IPC run off the root (which it should for most sites unless you're primarily only a forum) and the forum appears in the /forum/ directory, just like it did if you installed IPB there. But when you go to a topic, then unlike the install into the forum directory, it disappears completely. Now you went form the mysite.com/forum/ directory to the mysite.com/topics/ directory which is just confusing to the user and possibly search engines.

I don't know the answer to this but there should be decision on how FURLS are handled and I don't know. If the friendly part is irrelevant and all articles can be quickly retrieved using article ID, then arguably all URLs should appear to the leftmost position so that the machine only needs to read the digits where specified at the beginning of the URL instead of having to scan the whole thing, a few dozen alphanumeric characters, only to have to then traverse backward from the end to identify the digits that identify the article ID, as IP Content is structured.

My concern is that 4.0 is a very long distance away. Every week I remain on vbulletin feels a month too long, especially as I'll want to upgrade PHP and that can't happen with VB.

[Marcher Technologies]

umm.... I just wanted to state it is not at all as simple as that^ regarding CCS furl's.

r-# is generated, but not required.... in fact, a LOT of the difficulty in programmatical handling of the furl's is based in the fact the item # is not required.

It is not even in the category furl's, it is in no page furl(which is why it can be very difficult to tell the difference programmatically between a page and a folder in certain circumstances).

On top of that, any 'stock' change made would mean a rather nasty redirect script would be required for existing installations..... which merely the thought of what would be involved to do THAT properly makes me honestly shudder..... I would be more inclined to add a power setting myself for new installs.

Edit: Not to say I do not absolutely hate the nested category furls, or that I disagree that it could use more control, just stating it is not as easy as it seems, and is with other applications.

[esquire]

I never implied it would be easy. :) I think we may need some official insight from the mothership in order to confirm how these items will be managed going forward so that any impact can be minimized prospectively.

[bfarber]

We cannot confirm what changes will be in 4.0 regarding URLs just yet. Keep in mind that while you are a new site starting out and can strongly consider optimal structure for your purposes and so forth, any major changes we make will materially affect all of our current clients and require redirects and their sites to be reindexed (which tends to add a lot of additional load as search engines visit all of the "new" URLs). These things have to be done carefully.

Just as an aside from my personal perspective, regarding this:

Now you went form the mysite.com/forum/ directory to the mysite.com/topics/ directory which is just confusing to the user and possibly search engines.
 

I don't really agree with this. When I browse a website, I never pay attention to the URL, and I'm a developer who understands all this. The typical user (young, old, experienced, inexperienced) does not really care what the URL is - they care about what is on the page and reaching the page(s) they want to reach. If the URL said "/this_is_a_nuclear_reactor" and the content of the page was about butterflies, some users may spot this and be curious what the deal is, but I think the typical user really just browses around the net, not really caring what it says in the address bar unless they run into a specified need to know.

[esquire]

We cannot confirm what changes will be in 4.0 regarding URLs just yet. Keep in mind that while you are a new site starting out and can strongly consider optimal structure for your purposes and so forth, any major changes we make will materially affect all of our current clients and require redirects and their sites to be reindexed (which tends to add a lot of additional load as search engines visit all of the "new" URLs). These things have to be done carefully.

My point is that whatever you choose - and I'm not debating what might be "better" for anyone's setup - it must be consistent across the entire suite. I completely understand what you're saying about existing clients and appreciate the difficulty - I really do. But if they are using a suboptimal URL system as a result of inconsistency, I'm not sure that it completely makes sense to continue to cater to it since you've headed in that direction for such a long time. Nor does it make sense for newcomers to choose a suboptimal system either. And I showed you in the other thread how the URL shortening creates problems because it only works for one system or another - and in IPS you have two polar opposite approaches in IPC and IPB.

There are many who rave about VBSEO. In retrospect I didn't fully appreciate why it was good, being turned away completely by the overhyped marketing. But a good amount of it made good sense. It would seem logical that if there are obvious inconsistencies and latent issues (such as the breadcrumbs), you're not going to have the very best performance you can expect from the software. This part should be easy and automatic. Now I understand that going forward presents difficult decisions. I'm just requesting guidance on how to go forward now that we have identified that there is a question. Right now I'm using Marcher's amazing breadcrumb app just to deal with the breadcrumb issue. But the URL issue is a big one -- I got something to work on one of my sites, must fix the IPC inconsistency to match with IPB, but need to know what you're thinking regarding IPB 4. Supposedly the "forum" keyword was reserved and you couldn't do what I did.

Just as an aside from my personal perspective, regarding this:

Now you went form the mysite.com/forum/ directory to the mysite.com/topics/ directory which is just confusing to the user and possibly search engines.
 

I don't really agree with this. When I browse a website, I never pay attention to the URL, and I'm a developer who understands all this. The typical user (young, old, experienced, inexperienced) does not really care what the URL is - they care about what is on the page and reaching the page(s) they want to reach. If the URL said "/this_is_a_nuclear_reactor" and the content of the page was about butterflies, some users may spot this and be curious what the deal is, but I think the typical user really just browses around the net, not really caring what it says in the address bar unless they run into a specified need to know.

I respect your opinions but I do not agree at all. People may not remember full URLs but they do appreciate a sense of order and structure with base URLs. In fact, browsers will very frequently type in the root where they want to go

/forum/

/articles/

/members/

/links/

/games/

And if you don't believe me, I've got analytics on numerous sites telling me that they do. When you start typing in many browsers, you'll see autofill that will also provide a drop down to go to frequently used directories. What I find maddening is that there is no base url for each app. Different apps here send me all over the place. And if you don't install in the root, you get forum/members and forum/calendar and that just looks wrong even though it works.

IPS belies everything you're telling me about the forum URL not being important. When I create an article, I MUST have a slug. Every IPC article must begin mysite. com/slug/ which I've frequently changed to mysite.com/articles/ . Every article is in the articles section. You can't do mysite.com/article-name-here/ nor can you do mysite.com/carstuff/article-name/ because the slug for the database MUST be in the URL. It's not so bad if you're using IPC for articles because you'd probably organize your site in some fashion anyway.

Now when you go to IPB, you've got mysite.com/forum/ -- great. And then it switches to mysite.com/topic/ - which I found confusing at first. I don't know of any system that suddenly switches what appeared to be the base url of the primary container you were in. Technically it works and there is no issue. From a front facing user standpoint, I don't believe it makes a great impression and I cannot speak with 100% assurance about its effect, positive of negative, on SEO.

Look at Wordpress. Every single blog uses the blog directory. There are millions of websites that use this convention. Even the postname URL still keeps you within that blog so that mysite.com/carblog/ or mysite.com/wpstore/ will retain that base url for all urls. Now while I agree that "it works" - it certainly doesn't provide to me a very satisfying result to see one part of the website not change the

Maybe I'm wrong - which I may be. But I'd like to see numerous examples of sites that have a similar inconsistent structure of their URLs between areas like IPS does at present. I feel strongly about this and I do appreciate the quick response you've made, whether you agree or disagree. Sincerely, thank you for having a discussion with me on this issue.

[NewRockRabbit]

I don't really agree with this. When I browse a website, I never pay attention to the URL, and I'm a developer who understands all this. The typical user (young, old, experienced, inexperienced) does not really care what the URL is - they care about what is on the page and reaching the page(s) they want to reach. If the URL said "/this_is_a_nuclear_reactor" and the content of the page was about butterflies, some users may spot this and be curious what the deal is, but I think the typical user really just browses around the net, not really caring what it says in the address bar unless they run into a specified need to know.

But Google etc prefer a logical directory structure - their guidance and Matt Cutts have said so - IPB and IPC make it very difficult to create that structure.

[Michael]

And so exactly how is the use of 'forum' in the URL when in a forum, and 'topic' while in a topic, not a logical directory structure?

[Weppa333]

how many times do we have to have this discussion

People like newrabbit, and me, and google, and most of the civilized world, would like IPB, as an option for us dinosaurs from the 90s, to PLEASE have (the option to activate) an url structure like

blah.com/module/forumname/threadname.html?args&args2

or with IPC

blah.com/ipc/category/article-name.html?args

and with gallerye

blah.com/gallery/cat/image.html?args

and of course whateve's on root as

blah.com (and not blah.com/forum or blah.com/index )

And have BREADCRUMBs consistent with that, namely

> whatever-is-the-root > forum > forumname > threadname > pageX

> whateverroot > ipc-name > cat > blah

and just

> whateverroot

as the sole breadcrumb when accessing blah.com

In fact, for god's sake, everyone exactly knows what they would like, it's just IPB refusing to do it.

[Michael]

You have it completely within your power to modify your URLs however you want by modifying the furlTemplates.php files. If there are breadcrumbs that need fixed to show better hierarchies, then report those specific examples as bugs and I'm sure IPS (not IPB, that's the acronym for the software, not the company) will fix them.

And in addition, if you're so very civilized, then it may help to discuss this in a more civil manner. You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.

[Weppa333]

Currently, as an IPC user

If I'm on an IPC page, even with IPC defined as the core app, the breadcrumb has blah.com/index as root

This points not to the root app (which is IPC in my case)... but to the forum !

Worse than that, the breacrumb (on my dev install) is

> blah.com/index >> blah.com/index?app=ccs (which is exacrtly the same page, IPB likes to have multiple URL for the same stuff, if I put IPC live I have at least 3 different URLS for my frontpage, let's say I'm dead in google in 2 weeks)

[Weppa333]

And again, sorry if I sound upset it's just that I'm a customer of a 90% perfect product that is always 90% ready to go live here, I've been devving my own copy for more than a year now, and at each and every version it's simply impossible to have the remaining 10% of nonsense fixed.

And I did open tickets for the breadcrumb stuff more than a year ago in 3.3 times...

[Weppa333]

Ho and while I'm at it

blah.com/index (the forum main page) ... has no breadcrumb.

Even of this site by the way...

Don't ask me why, :smile:

ANd I disagree with #11 : having proper breadcrumbs, sitewide, with IPC as the root app is impossible without hacking the source code (which I did of course, but I have to do it at each and every minor release) and also without redirecting the many double or triple URLs for the same destination. (Don't tell me about fixing ugly nonsensical stuff with "canonical tags" please, I'm from the 90s :smile: )

[Aiwa]

Currently, as an IPC user

If I'm on an IPC page, even with IPC defined as the core app, the breadcrumb has blah.com/index as root

This points not to the root app (which is IPC in my case)... but to the forum !

Worse than that, the breacrumb (on my dev install) is

> blah.com/index >> blah.com/index?app=ccs (which is exacrtly the same page, IPB likes to have multiple URL for the same stuff, if I put IPC live I have at least 3 different URLS for my frontpage, let's say I'm dead in google in 2 weeks)

That's because currently the 'core' is 'forum'. IPC is an addon that you can set as the DEFAULT app... But it's NOT the 'core'...

I would venture a guess that the breadcrumb navigation will be changing in 4.0 because if you have IPC without IPB then there would be no /index breadcrumb to lead you to the forums if that app is not installed.

Create a feedback topic with exactly what your issues are and patiently wait for 4.0. It's WAY too late in the game to get what you're wanting into 3.4.

[esquire]

And so exactly how is the use of 'forum' in the URL when in a forum, and 'topic' while in a topic, not a logical directory structure?

If you name the "slug" to "articles" so it doesn't look horrendous as is, every article is contained within the articles base directory. In the example you site, forum posts are not within the forum base directory.

Let's use another example - the members here. This is the very definition of very poor.

http://community.invisionpower.com/members/
http://community.invisionpower.com/user/44642-michael/
 

Why isn't this /members/ and /members/44642-michael/ ????

From even the most basic of scripts you see this type of consistent behavior. If I recall even open source community sites do the same. This has been the case for a decade. And if you're telling your members to hand out their user pages (which are preferably without a number but let's get beyond that), then they will think "members/membername/" because that's the directory they go to in order to search for other members. The URL is visible. Let's not pretend that it's hidden behind some invisible curtain - it's right at the top of the browser and users DO see this. I ran a site that got over 7 billion annual page views. They were sensitive to user name URLs. Perhaps I am mistaken but I'm just sharing my experience - aside from any SEO implications which were probably an obsession by the tech people regarding these structures.

[esquire]

That's because currently the 'core' is 'forum'. IPC is an addon that you can set as the DEFAULT app... But it's NOT the 'core'...

I would venture a guess that the breadcrumb navigation will be changing in 4.0 because if you have IPC without IPB then there would be no /index breadcrumb to lead you to the forums if that app is not installed.

Create a feedback topic with exactly what your issues are and patiently wait for 4.0. It's WAY too late in the game to get what you're wanting into 3.4.

I did create a feedback topic here - we need guidance now in order to transition to 4.0 these two related issues - URLs and breadcrumbs - to ensure that we can have a smooth transition from a more recognized, consistent system towards a new system. Right now they ARE able to be overcome with great grief and some of Marcher's amazing products. I'd like for there to be a transition from there to 4.0 in some recognized fashion, e.g. "we'll keep in mind that if you setup URLs like this and use Marcher's Crumbies plugin, you'll be able to continue with those URLs later and the breadcrumbs will work in the same consistent manner as they do so that Crumbies will not be needed." As of now whatever FURL you do is at your own risk. I'd like to be able to say that if we keep formats of /12345-article-or-forum-topic-name/ that this format will be usable in 4.0 for both IPB and IPC.

I spent one full week trying to get 3.3.4 to behave the way I think it should. I don't think that URLs are hidden behind a curtain and users don't ever pay attention to them. If that was the case, why does Google bother showing URLs in search engine results as does every other search engine? These have been best practices I've seen both by front end UI architects as well as back end programmers. (I'm from the 90s too.) I'm not blaming anyone. IPB did not start out as a Suite but as a forum. It's a great product. Things were added on that probably were best accomplished in a different way had the IP Suite been in mind way back at that time. Not uncommon and now there is the process of "decoupling" those apps that are conjoined to the forum like a Siamese twin. I just hope... and pray... that what I'm talking about above is not dismissed as unimportant as it seems to be above that users have no concern or wont' even notice if the base URLs of this page was /forum/ or /duncecaps/ .

[Aiwa]

I did create a feedback topic here - we need guidance now in order to transition to 4.0 these two related issues - URLs and breadcrumbs - to ensure that we can have a smooth transition from a more recognized, consistent system towards a new system. Right now they ARE able to be overcome with great grief and some of Marcher's amazing products. I'd like for there to be a transition from there to 4.0 in some recognized fashion, e.g. "we'll keep in mind that if you setup URLs like this and use Marcher's Crumbies plugin, you'll be able to continue with those URLs later and the breadcrumbs will work in the same consistent manner as they do so that Crumbies will not be needed." As of now whatever FURL you do is at your own risk. I'd like to be able to say that if we keep formats of /12345-article-or-forum-topic-name/ that this format will be usable in 4.0 for both IPB and IPC.

I spent one full week trying to get 3.3.4 to behave the way I think it should. I don't think that URLs are hidden behind a curtain and users don't ever pay attention to them. If that was the case, why does Google bother showing URLs in search engine results as does every other search engine? These have been best practices I've seen both by front end UI architects as well as back end programmers. (I'm from the 90s too.) I'm not blaming anyone. IPB did not start out as a Suite but as a forum. It's a great product. Things were added on that probably were best accomplished in a different way had the IP Suite been in mind way back at that time. Not uncommon and now there is the process of "decoupling" those apps that are conjoined to the forum like a Siamese twin. I just hope... and pray... that what I'm talking about above is not dismissed as unimportant as it seems to be above that users have no concern or wont' even notice if the base URLs of this page was /forum/ or /duncecaps/ .

I, obviously, can't speak for IPS, but I don't see them being able to give you FURL information about a product that isn't complete and released... I don't think they would entertain that discussion until it went beta, but that's my thought process...

Also, I don't expect IPS to taylor their system around a 3rd party plugin, no offense MT. Changes you make to your FURL's that make them non-default are done at your own risk. IPS can't programatically account for every variation of custom change a client has made. So that thought, while I understand where you're coming from, is a pipe dream.

I may have read Brandon differently. I don't think his comment was that users don't notice the URL's, but rather they generally don't care what they are as long as general click navigation is intuitive and gets them where they want to go.

[bfarber]

Just to clarify a few points here....

1) I'm afraid we cannot tell you whether URLs you customize (not out of the box) and/or whether the effects a third party modification have on your site now will be available out of the box in 4.0. We are in planning stages. We take SEO seriously. Unfortunately, we do not have any specific information we can share yet.

2) Just because I said that in my personal opinion the average user (in reality, in my personal opinion, even a highly techy user) does not actually care what the URL is in the address bar, does not mean that we don't/won't pay attention to them while developing 4.0. Please don't confuse my personal opinion on URL importance to the average user with what direction IPS as a company will take the product. :) As a developer, I realize there is an obligation to pay attention to the URLs. I was simply responding to a single specific point you had made about users.

@Weppa - there is a setting in the ACP to remove the 'forum' initial breadcrumb when you are not in the forum application. This was added to help account for situations such as the one you are facing. If you enable the setting, when you are in IP.Content no "site.com/index" breadcrumb should be added. Beyond that, however, if the forums are not the default application then they currently get a /index FURL to allow the software to load the board index. To change this would require some modifications (as I think you've noted).

[esquire]

I, obviously, can't speak for IPS, but I don't see them being able to give you FURL information about a product that isn't complete and released... I don't think they would entertain that discussion until it went beta, but that's my thought process...

Also, I don't expect IPS to taylor their system around a 3rd party plugin, no offense MT. Changes you make to your FURL's that make them non-default are done at your own risk. IPS can't programatically account for every variation of custom change a client has made. So that thought, while I understand where you're coming from, is a pipe dream.

Not at all. There needs to be some convention. If IPS 4.0 means that there are no guarantees that URL structures from 3.x will be supported in 4.0 then let us know that today. And if the only guaranteed structures are the current ones stock - which means IPS has ID numbers at end and IPB has ID number at the beginning - then let us know that now too. I don't need the ingredients to the secret sauce but don't see how being able to formulate just a handful of generally acceptable and highly used consistent URL formats should be problematic.

Regarding Breadcrumbs - that has to work properly and consistently throughout all IPS applications. I would have assumed that structure is obvious since it's practically the same on every good website - variations being current page listed/not listed in breadcrumb. I don't think this requires explanation why.

I may have read Brandon differently. I don't think his comment was that users don't notice the URL's, but rather they generally don't care what they are as long as general click navigation is intuitive and gets them where they want to go.

That's like saying that many don't care whether they are taken in a polished cadillac or a budget car service to work provided the passenger arrives at the desired destination. Yes they are glad to get to their destination. But that's a requirement and not an option. And if you don't think users notice the difference (and potentially search engines) then I'll show you several examples that say that they do.

Not that SEOMOZ is the gospel but they use "q" instead of forum as the base url to the forum. They could easily ditch that in favor of /t/ when a thread or topic is being shown and be done with it. Why do you think they didn't ditch the "q" as the base url? One basic statement I found regarding navigation doing a search and contained in guidelines from usability.gov :

Feedback provides users with the information they need to understand where they are within the Web site, and for proceeding to the next activity. Examples of feedback include providing path and hierarchy information (i.e., ’breadcrumbs’), matching link text to the destination page’s heading, and creating URLs that relate to the user’s location on the site.

"topics" does not relate the user's location on the site. I could include it and also say "which of the following is different from all the others?" That is because all of these pertain to the app you are using while on the page you are browsing:

• "members"
• "articles" or "_"
• "forum" or "forums"
• "calendar"
• "store"
• "files"
• "gallery"

Anyways, I've spoken my piece. I respect that others may have a completely different viewpoint but, for me, I will strive to create sites that resemble this structure in the indefinite future until something convinces me that this is not a good practice or convention.

[esquire]

Just to clarify a few points here....
1) I'm afraid we cannot tell you whether URLs you customize (not out of the box) and/or whether the effects a third party modification have on your site now will be available out of the box in 4.0. We are in planning stages. We take SEO seriously. Unfortunately, we do not have any specific information we can share yet.

Brandon, as always - I much appreciate the time taken for discussion with us as much as your team can. I appreciate the great monumental difficulty in making big impacting decisions. But putting aside SEO, we don't even have consistent generation of URLs between IPC and IPB. I think that the need to make a decision and help us know where you're going is very important! As such and understanding where you guys are, hopefully you can keep us in the loop as to where you are in those stages. That said, it makes it challenging for me to move my primary forums over along with the content management until we can get an idea of which convention you will choose, assuming there will only be one. (Because there can only be One. :D )

2) Just because I said that in my personal opinion the average user (in reality, in my personal opinion, even a highly techy user) does not actually care what the URL is in the address bar, does not mean that we don't/won't pay attention to them while developing 4.0. Please don't confuse my personal opinion on URL importance to the average user with what direction IPS as a company will take the product. :smile: As a developer, I realize there is an obligation to pay attention to the URLs. I was simply responding to a single specific point you had made about users.

Appreciated - and I understand. From a legal standpoint I also had to deal with the rather stringent usability guidelines which IPS (and many applications) cannot come near to supporting. But the low hanging fruit has been around for a very long time. Note that there are many other places a hyperlink may appear - such as a link on another page that isn't shortened, is partially shortened or may even be printed in footnotes on a paper document. The best sites always contain a URL that provides the user the likely section of your website that the URL pertains at a glance. Same with basic breadcrumb navigation.

That said... I'm recognizing that getting to the above may not be easy at this point. I recognize that and appreciate your consideration of what I'm saying and respect your perspective. Thanks for sharing your personal opinion with us openly here.

@Weppa - there is a setting in the ACP to remove the 'forum' initial breadcrumb when you are not in the forum application. This was added to help account for situations such as the one you are facing. If you enable the setting, when you are in IP.Content no "site.com/index" breadcrumb should be added. Beyond that, however, if the forums are not the default application then they currently get a /index FURL to allow the software to load the board index. To change this would require some modifications (as I think you've noted).

Unfortunately this is what plagued me. If Forums are the default application in the root you end up with /forums/IPS-APP/ as your url except if you're using IPC or IP Nexus. Now if you use IPC to have a home page that isn't your forum, you end up with the /index in all of your apps which will create a second URL alias to your home page that also doesn't work (which is the real problem! ;) ) And that's where Marcher's app has been a required part of every IPS install I do and why he deserves the accolades IMHO. :smile:

[Aiwa]

Unfortunately this is what plagued me. If Forums are the default application in the root you end up with /forums/IPS-APP/ as your url except if you're using IPC or IP Nexus. Now if you use IPC to have a home page that isn't your forum, you end up with the /index in all of your apps which will create a second URL alias to your home page that also doesn't work (which is the real problem! ;) ) And that's where Marcher's app has been a required part of every IPS install I do and why he deserves the accolades IMHO. :smile:

/index links only to the board index and nothing is ever added to it. You won't see a /index/blog... /index = /index.php?act=idx

How does it create a second URL alias to your home page? Both the breadcrumb and the navigation links point to /index when forums is not the default app.

[esquire]

/index links only to the board index and nothing is ever added to it. You won't see a /index/blog... /index = /index.php?act=idx

How does it create a second URL alias to your home page? Both the breadcrumb and the navigation links point to /index when forums is not the default app.

See what happens here. I can't remember why but once you start removing index.php from the URL and go through the usual SEO setup this is the result of what happens. Look at the home page URL. Do note that I changed the furlTemplates.php in the forum from "index" to "forum/" so that going to the forum would be mysite.c om /forum/

[Aiwa]

Navigation:

'Home' you can get rid of... That's there because you have it in the settings to be there.. Or it's a custom tab.

'Forum' goes to /forum per your furlTemplate, that's good...

Breadcrumb

'Home' is going to /index, which isn't a valid FURL... You've missed something.

[Marcher Technologies]

Navigation:

'Home' you can get rid of... That's there because you have it in the settings to be there.. Or it's a custom tab.

'Forum' goes to /forum per your furlTemplate, that's good...

Breadcrumb

'Home' is going to /index, which isn't a valid FURL... You've missed something.

'Home' is the forums root crumb, and you cannot get rid of that without a mod within the forums application.

The issue(as far as I can tell, and untested, for all i know that is a skin issue, or a stray crumb, going to test this) that 8 highlights is that the code does the 'base' forum breadcrumb:

<if test="switchnavigation:|:!$this->settings['remove_forums_nav'] OR ipsRegistry::$current_application == 'forums'">
								<li itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
									<a href='{parse url="act=idx" seotitle="false" base="public"}' itemprop="url">
										<span itemprop="title">{$this->settings['board_name']}</span>
									</a>
								</li>
								<if test="didfirstnav:|:$this->did_first=1"></if>
							</if>

appears to not be honoring furlTemplates modification.

even barring any bug, that IS the issue he is so frustrated with, that within the forums, forums instead of the active app are crumb root even turning that option to remove the forums crumb on.