looooong links, its this normal? (migration after vb 3.8)

[MeMaBlue]

Hello,

 the usual links from vbulletin would not need a url shortener

http://www.parentscafe.gr/showthread.php?t=39012   

the new links at ipb 4. look like this

topic link

http://www.parentscafe.gr/forum/index.php?app=forums&module=forums&controller=topic&id=3089  

is there something that can be done about it - so that we dont have to use a url shortener everytime when pasting a link to a certain thread? 

and if so how do i obtain the shorter link ? 

same is for forum link  http://www.parentscafe.gr/forum/index.php?app=forums&module=forums&controller=forums&id=135

can i remove somewhere something to make theme shorter? 

 

thank you in advance 

[opentype]

3 minutes ago, MeMaBlue said:

is there something that can be done about it?

Of course. Turn on friendly URLs. 

[MeMaBlue]

 hello  @opentype thank you very much, 

we cant enable friendly urls 

because they turn the urls into greek language characters which in turn  make the links also unreadable and  even Looooooooonger for example on facebook etc. 

i dont know if youve seen something like this but the link looks like this  &%j6%6%k5$f$F2h8s22dr3keogj%f5%g%g5g5g%gG5G5gGg5gGGg5gb  

unfortunately friendly urls  is very nice only when your forum is in english or other language with abgffdfs characters...     !

greek characters  are like this  λκξκξκδφλκαξσειςορθσκδλφξκαλ and i guess the encoding makes everything different. 

 

[opentype]

You can use friendly URL with any script, not just Latin. 

I just tested it again on my site. No problems: 

[newbie LAC]

Hello,

5 minutes ago, MeMaBlue said:

i dont know if youve seen something like this but the link looks like this  &%j6%6%k5$f$F2h8s22dr3keogj%f5%g%g5g5g%gG5G5gGg5gGGg5gb  

Try one of plugins

Also you can customize your urls. ACP - System - Advanced Configuration - tab Friendly URLs

[MeMaBlue]

Opentype try to post this link on facebook and you ll see what i mean:-) 

thank u newbie lac will see all of these and post with results.!

[opentype]

7 minutes ago, MeMaBlue said:

Opentype try to post this link on facebook and you ll see what i mean:-) 

No, I don’t see what you mean. That works fine as well. 

 

Again: IPS 4.x supports all scripts available in Unicode and browser do too. There might be instances where non-ASCII characters in URLs get URL-encoded, but there is nothing wrong with that. That also happens with millions of Wikipedia URLs which are copied and pasted millions of times a day. 

[MeMaBlue]

hello @opentype ! here is an example!  (random link )

http://paramarketing.gr/web-design-κατασκευη-ιστοσελιδων/   

which in turn looks like this when posted shared on facebook  .    

    can you perhaps give me an example of what you mean with wikipedia links? 

[MeMaBlue]

@newbie LAC  i tried to find the "friendly urls", and i even shows up in admin cp search, but when clicking it,  there is no such option or any words at all in the 2 tabs the   advanced configuration has.    I read both 2 tabs,   3 times but i didnt see anything.  am i too tired  or is it really not there  ?    

when i click on the red link, it takes me to the advanced config but there is nothing there at any tab   about friendly urls. ! 

 

[newbie LAC]

7 hours ago, MeMaBlue said:

when i click on the red link, it takes me to the advanced config but there is nothing there at any tab   about friendly urls. ! 

[opentype]

9 hours ago, MeMaBlue said:

hello @opentype ! here is an example!  (random link )

http://paramarketing.gr/web-design-κατασκευη-ιστοσελιδων/   

which in turn looks like this when posted shared on facebook  .    

That’s a limitation of the browser you are using. Not everyone will have that result. (I don’t.)
And you don’t have to actually post it like that on Facebook. You can just delete the URL again after Facebook has picked up the URL.  

 

9 hours ago, MeMaBlue said:

 can you perhaps give me an example of what you mean with wikipedia links? 

Sure: https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ελλάδα

It’s one of the most-used websites and they don’t work around non-Latin scripts such as Greek for their friendly URLs. You can do the same. 

[MeMaBlue]

11 hours ago, newbie LAC said:

 @newbie LAC No, its not there! how can this be ? ??   i only have the two tabs server environment and data storage.  

       

 

 

 

[MeMaBlue]

@opentype thank you very much for your input, i appreciate it. 

i guess there can be different views on that. Dont want to do the same. i can't count on users doing the procedure you mention ("And you don’t have to actually post it like that on Facebook. You can just delete the URL again after Facebook has picked up the URL "  )   dont want to expect that from my users and i want the links to be shared easily with no hassle. I dont want to have the handicap of what browser the user will have or if he has the time to edit the link ;-). 

the example you gave about wikipedia greece  , if you search facebook for https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=el.wikipedia.org

(the link of the greek wikipedia) you will see maybe an analogy of 20 posts with the 3$$^%&^^&^   and only one that has the actual greek characters. Personally i would never click on a link that looks like this. 

note: maybe also the criteria for friendly urls  is something we dont need -  our larger page has amazing seo so we dont actually need them for seo purposes, our traffic has been steady for many years so the only thing we care right now is to have decent looking not too long links that will not change depending on the browser or facebook or other medium they are posted in ;-) 

Maybe wikipedia .gr needs them to be like that so that its really considered "greek" content (i.e. politically correct)   but in my opinion the way it looks is not doing it any good.  :-)

Am curious of what the tab newbie lac  suggests  (customize friendly urls) will do to the links -  as soon as i can manage to have it appear on my admincp! as you can see i dont have it !   after some thought,  @newbie LAC  -  I am guessing that it will appear if i enable the friendly url.   (right now its not enabled so probably maybe the according tab is hidden when you dont have them enabled)

[opentype]

22 minutes ago, MeMaBlue said:

@opentype thank you very much for your input, i appreciate it. 

i guess there can be different views on that.

I didn’t present a “view”. You asked how to get rid of these ?app=forum&module=blabla URLs and I told you. You can do with that information whatever you want. ;-)

 

Quote

our larger page has amazing seo so we dont actually need them for seo purposes,

That statement sounds a little weird. No one “needs” friendly URLs per se, but will they have a significant SEO effect over ?ID=25626? You bet they will!

 

[Ryan Ashbrook]

21 hours ago, MeMaBlue said:

hello @opentype ! here is an example!  (random link )

http://paramarketing.gr/web-design-κατασκευη-ιστοσελιδων/   

which in turn looks like this when posted shared on facebook  .    

    can you perhaps give me an example of what you mean with wikipedia links? 

This is browser specific. Some (like Safari) will decode the characters to their proper equivalents - Firefox, however, will not so you get the percent-encoded versions instead. It's a browser quirk, rather than an issue with the suite.

[MeMaBlue]

hello @opentype ..as i said, there is no worries about seo, with 10 years +- same stats  on our webpage without friendly urls and 400.000 unique users per month on our larger site, for a website solely in greek, and niche market (parents).  It might sound weird yes, but everyone has his own admin things to worry about.  

we are worried (also) about other legal things that might make things difficult, for example defamation laws in greece that are very strict and doctor names being mentioned in titles or even urls in the new forum topics our members open about their obgyn or pediatricians. that would be completely no-no. Last month we had to pay 2.000e.. in lawyer fees just to prove what a forum means, to the outdated greek law system, because some doc didnt like negative comments about himself. 
 a simple url would do, for us, just fine, and its not weird - its a valid reason :-) 

we have 2 websites. the one with the legal above issue, wont get friendly urls.. we havent migrated it yet, we started with the smaller forum. 
the smaller one that does not have so many discussions about medical issues and talks about doctors, that we will consider doing friendly urls but only with transliteration .

About ips 4. doing its part correctly,
look, when i copied the link I personally posted here, from this forum, to my facebook browser, (in Chrome)  it pasted well to facebook i.e. facebook recognized the greek letters.
when i copied the link , the same link, from directly the website its published on, (opened it newly, i.e. its homepage, click on the tab and get link)  then paste facebook  (again in Chrome) did not recognize the greek letters. 

I guess this is what you mean, that ips4. will not have this problems other websites have with the greek characters because of its encoding. ? 

Test Topic :

  i posted a link , that i copied from the url-adress line here on my chrome,  on facebook.  look how it appears : 

 

 about browsers, well, if our users have chrome  59%,  firefox11%  (as i saw from our smaller forum analytics right now) and both of them together is 70%, and both browsers are not so happy about greek characters as safari  (17,5%), then we (we as a single client i mean) will have to acknowledge this as an issue.  

I realise we might not be the average client with our issue... so... anyhow, i need to solve this..    
I will report with more details about how we will procede.  the best would be just to have the possibility of a smaller length link

 any comment is appreciated, thank you

 

 

 

[Ryan Ashbrook]

5 minutes ago, MeMaBlue said:

hello @opentype ..as i said, there is no worries about seo, with 10 years +- same stats  on our webpage without friendly urls and 400.000 unique users per month on our larger site, for a website solely in greek, and niche market (parents).  It might sound weird yes, but everyone has his own admin things to worry about.  

we are worried (also) about other legal things that might make things difficult, for example defamation laws in greece that are very strict and doctor names being mentioned in titles or even urls in the new forum topics our members open about their obgyn or pediatricians. that would be completely no-no. Last month we had to pay 2.000e.. in lawyer fees just to prove what a forum means, to the outdated greek law system, because some doc didnt like negative comments about himself. 
 a simple url would do, for us, just fine, and its not weird - its a valid reason :-) 

we have 2 websites. the one with the legal above issue, wont get friendly urls.. we havent migrated it yet, we started with the smaller forum. 
the smaller one that does not have so many discussions about medical issues and talks about doctors, that we will consider doing friendly urls but only with transliteration .

About ips 4. doing its part correctly,
look, when i copied the link I personally posted here, from this forum, to my facebook browser, (in Chrome)  it pasted well to facebook i.e. facebook recognized the greek letters.
when i copied the link , the same link, from directly the website its published on, (opened it newly, i.e. its homepage, click on the tab and get link)  then paste facebook  (again in Chrome) did not recognize the greek letters. 

I guess this is what you mean, that ips4. will not have this problems other websites have with the greek characters because of its encoding. ? 

Test Topic :

  i posted a link , that i copied from the url-adress line here on my chrome,  on facebook.  look how it appears : 

 

 about browsers, well, if our users have chrome  59%,  firefox11%  (as i saw from our smaller forum analytics right now) and both of them together is 70%, and both browsers are not so happy about greek characters as safari  (17,5%), then we (we as a single client i mean) will have to acknowledge this as an issue.  

I realise we might not be the average client with our issue... so... anyhow, i need to solve this..    
I will report with more details about how we will procede.  the best would be just to have the possibility of a smaller length link

 any comment is appreciated, thank you

 

 

 

For what it's worth, the URL formats are customizable. So you can completely remove the title from the URL, if you wish, and just simply have /topic/1234/, for example.

Admin CP > System > Advanced Configuration > Friendly URL's.

[MeMaBlue]

2 hours ago, Ryan Ashbrook said:

This is browser specific. Some (like Safari) will decode the characters to their proper equivalents - Firefox, however, will not so you get the percent-encoded versions instead. It's a browser quirk, rather than an issue with the suite.

yes i realised from the other comments too.  ofcourse,  i never said its not because of ips4.   :-)  but  my problem is that because of the greek language,  (that is not ips.4 fault)   i either have to choose from a) loong links  or b) friendly urls with loong links that translate into %4@7^449g)g4d#k#c@x!c5bI   unless you do transliteration

i still have a problem even if its not invisionpower 's problem  :-)  i need a   

[Ryan Ashbrook]

1 minute ago, MeMaBlue said:

yes i realised from the other comments too.  ofcourse,  i never said its not because of ips4.   :-)  but  my problem is that because of the greek language,  (that is not ips.4 fault)   i either have to choose from a) loong links  or b) friendly urls with loong links that translate into %4@7^449g)g4d#k#c@x!c5bI   unless you do transliteration

i still have a problem even if its not invisionpower 's problem  :-)  i need a   

Yes, that's what I mean - you don't have to have any titles in the URL's at all. If you go to the area I mentioned, you can simply remove them from the URL directly and just have the number, which gives you the shorter URL and also solves the issue with characters.

Feel free to submit a support request, and our technicians can assist you with explaining how to customize your URL's to a format that you like.  

[MeMaBlue]

@Ryan Ashbrook thank you. after enabling friendly urls ,

i still do not see the tab that lets me edit them . its missing.  

what do you think is wrong?   (will go and post a support ticket for that, i thought maybe by enabling friendly urls it would appear but no) 

[Ryan Ashbrook]

@MeMaBlue Not immediately - I would recommend contacting support, in that case.

[MeMaBlue]

Hello everybody, just wanted to comment that the problem was solved,  i activated friendly urls   ......when you enable them the tab shows,  it worked later on. 

but look what happened to my analytics /seo.... after the migration, the stats went up again, as you can see after the sharp V where we closed the forum down. But then, the friendly url activation  happened ! 

 

please help, do you have any suggestions @opentype ,  @Ryan Ashbrook , @newbie LAC 

what do i have to do  ?   ( i am really considering switching it back again ,.... FAST! )   any ideas????

I could never afford this with my larger website!...so it needs to be fixed or goodbye friendly urls!!!!

 

[opentype]

That’s normal. The site with the friendly URLs will be reindexed from scratch. Takes time to have that finished and get the traffic back up. In the long run, you will have more traffic because of friendly URLs. 

Basically, you shouldn’t have started with non-friendly URLs, but that tip doesn’t help much at this point. 

[MeMaBlue]

 how much time do  you think / have you experienced this? 

listen, i think if this takes weeks then a notification should be there before the activation, stating that  

"please note that if your forum prexists and has a good amount of seo it will drop because this and that  for aproximately ....xxxx time or as long as....... usually .... time" 

Because had i known this, i wouldnt have taken this step now.    - since i am redoing a lot of stuff with my adsense codes, this also changes the parameters and makes it even more difficult to compare the changes i ve made (!!!). 

i  maybe the rewriting has something to do with it? :

When enabled, Friendly URLs will not include 'index.php'. In order to support this you must configure your web server to rewrite all URLs for your community directory to the index.php file. For assistance on how to do this, contact your hosting provider or system administrator.
To see the .htaccess used for Apache servers for comparison, download this file.

i found this thing 
https://docs.joomla.org/Common_problems_when_enabling_Search_Engine_Friendly_(SEF)_URLs 

i have also notified my server administrators to check it up and will post to notify if we do something else. 

 

please if anyone else has any input its welcome!

[MeMaBlue]

On 1/11/2017 at 1:44 PM, opentype said:

That’s normal. The site with the friendly URLs will be reindexed from scratch. Takes time to have that finished and get the traffic back up. In the long run, you will have more traffic because of friendly URLs. 

Basically, you shouldn’t have started with non-friendly URLs, but that tip doesn’t help much at this point. 

hello opentype, i have opened a ticket and according to the support, its not normal, because all the previous links are still working despite the enabling of the friendly urls . 

our stats are still that low/bad, so , I am consulting now a google partner/seo analylist and we are trying to figure out what is technically wrong.  

we are at 1/3 of our previous traffic. horrible! hope its gonna be solved fast, will report here when i have more details.