Which mode should I use to rewrite the URLs? To make them search engine friendly? I have found two: Pretty URLs and Advance SEF URLs. Can you please help me which one is better and why?
neither one really matters.
Search Engines don't really care about the urls any more.
The only reason to use such things is for human readability, not search engines.
Well.... I have different views about that as I believe Google and other search engines gave importance if the Keyword is there in the URL...
Anyhow, I rephrase my question: Which mod is good for URL rewriting and why? :D
They really don't, and even if they did, you're reliant on people making topics with keywords; reality is unless you're editing every topic, they're going to have horrible titles.
Not to mention that if some day, for some reason, you choose not to use SEF URLs and remove that mod from the forum, you'll end up with a forum that has a bunch of links that go nowhere ::).
I do offer a reverter mod for Pretty urls if you choose to revert back to normal links
Hmmm... that's pretty interesting. Is it free? Link?
Yes, it is on the google code site I think linked from the mod page
If not you can get it at https://www.smfhacks.com/index.php/topic,9675.new.html
The reverter is in RC2, should I be using that?
I do need to uninstall the mod first, right?
Yes I believe so.
So, the main point is that I should not use any URL rewriting mod. And yes, it might be possible that someday I think about migrating my forum to some other script like phpBB or vBulletin and in that case, Google will find a lot of 404 error on my site as the same rewriting pattern might not be available on the new forum...
Thank you for the advice... It makes sense.