V4.1.x SEO: Moving listings ID at the end

[Markus +]

Hi!

I was trying to put the listings-ID at the end.

Example: domain.de/anzeige/name-of-listing-1.html

I did the following changes:

htaccess:

PHP Code:

RewriteRule ^anzeige/([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+)-([0-9]+).html$ viewlisting.php?view=$1 [NC] 


hooks.php in 68 seo module:

PHP Code:

$string="anzeige/".$string."-".$row['id'].".html"; 


That does not work for me - what�s wrong?

Thanks,
Markus

[Markus +]

Hi!

One more thing, maybe you can help me with this as well:

I have to rewrite special german characters in the url:

� = oe
� = ae
� = ue

an so on.

Where do I have to implement the function to convert?

Thanks again,
Markus

[seymourjames +]

From an SEO perspective I see no point to putting the ID number at the end. For example, this is quite adequate. The main purpose of these no php formats is for humans and not for search engines.

http://www.mydomain/listing-x-blablabla.html

If you do this you will need this line below in your .htaccess and also be aware that plugins designed to work with the normal SEO module supplied by 68C may need slight modification or they will not work. Modules I believe that may not work are the horizontal listings unless you change the link structure inside of the module.

RewriteRule ^listing-([0-9]+)-([0-9a-zA-Z_-]+).html$ viewlisting.php?view=$1 [NC]

[seymourjames +]

I can see why you might want to put German characters into the meta tags and for the page title but not in the url. Google et al are fully aware of how to convert from what people type in a search into ascii for example.

Only ascii characters can be used in urls. So if you use safe encoding of say � then it is %F9 . Hardly readable and pointless in a url string. You are also likely to suffer many problems with different browsers doing things differently. IE is horrible. Read this.

HTML URL Encoding Reference

[Markus +]

Hi!

Thanks for your reply.

From an SEO perspective I just want to have the most relevant terms closer to the URL. You�re right, it must fit both, title keywords in the URL for SEs (though they should be able to read dynamic URLs) and nice, readable URLs for humans. As for the SEs, I made good experience putting everything that is relevant on top/the beginning.

Your modification gives me a 404.

What about the mod in the hook.php - is that correct?

German chars:

I don�t want to put them in the URL. I want to remove/replace them in the URL - because (like you wrote) they can�t be placed in an URL. The URL is build by the title of the ad - if it�s "sch�ne Z�ge zu verkaufen", it would destroy the URL. I would like to replace the chars to "schoene Zuege zu verkaufen". Where do I have to modify?

Thank�s for your help!
Markus

[Mike-N-Tosh +]

I don't know for sure, but it would seem logical to me that the key lies in the listing_url function.

This function first decodes the title, then it has a series of replace commands. It would seem to me that you simply need to add the additional replace commands for each entity that you need to replace.

example:

PHP Code:

$string=str_replace('�', 'o', $string);
$string=str_replace('�', 'u', $string); 


I'm certainly no php expert, so others may have a better method. This is how I would approach it though.

[Eric Barnes]

Try this. Open modules/seo/hooks.php and find:
$string=preg_replace('/\W/e', '', $string); // LINE 32

Just below it add:
$string = convert_accented_characters($string);

[Mike-N-Tosh +]

See, Eric is an "other" that has a better method!

[Markus +]

Thank you both!

I think Mike�s solution does not work in the hooks.php.

Eric: Where can I find that funktion? Your solution works, but it will replace everything by "a" - maybe I can tweak it a little bit to replace the chars like in Mikes post ...

Thanks,
Markus

[Eric Barnes]

This is in includes/functions.php the second to last one.