Change urls

[damiun +]

Hi,

How can i change "http://www.damiun.nl/categories/fotocameras.html" to http://www.damiun.nl/categories/fotocameras/'

And "http://www.damiun.nl/listing/26/Test_status.html" to "http://www.damiun.nl/26_Test_status.html"

Thanks
Dominick

[Eric Barnes +]

For the first you can edit the seo module hooks.php file. Remove the .html on these lines:

"categories/\\1/sort/\\2/order/\\3/page/\\4.html",
        "categories/\\1/sort/\\2/order/\\3.html",
        "categories/\\1/page/\\2.html",
        "categories/\\1.html",
        "categories.html",
        "categories.html",

Then edit the .htaccess and remove the .html for the categories.

For the second one that is not easy and would need some type of directory so it knows where to look. The "listings/" part.

[seymourjames +]

For the second one I did this as it just gets too complicated to eliminate the listing and number of the ad directly, without creating an expired ad.

A Delightful French Property :30

using this

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

This was for 4.09 and I then had to modify several other files where ever the url was being explicitly constructed.

It will work in 4.1.X if you simply go into the hooks file of the SEO module and change this

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

to this

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

or even this

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


and then in .htaccess you put this

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


You will then have to check all your plugins like horizontal listings etc. No guarantee it will work but it did for me when I tested it very briefly. This way you do end up with something simpler. Not sure there is any real advantage if you are concerned about SEO. More likely to just make upgrades more complicated for you in the future. The advantage of directory elimination in the url is negligible. Search engines care about content.


You will however arrive with urls like this with just the number in the url.

http://mydomain.com/14-myadtitle.html

or in the second case like this

http://mydomain.com/14myadtitle.html

The problem is if you try to remove the number, you will get an expired advert. It actually brings up a complicated subject of avoiding multiple urls to the same content and the need for uniqueness - that certainly does have an SEO effect. That number is basically preventing somebody entering an ad with the same title which would create an identical url. Clearly you can see that would not work ?