SMF3?

[movierchives]

Just wondering if there will be one.  I remember SMF saying the time frames would be faster after the change to BSD license but haven't seen any talk of even an alpha being worked on?

[live627]

2.1 comes first

[movierchives]

So no SMF3 in sight, just SMF2 which was getting old before it reached final....................oh well worth asking

[Illori]

2.1 is not 2.0. 2.1 will have new features etc before it is released.

[Sapozhnik]

2.1 is not 2.0. 2.1 will have new features etc before it is released.

when can we expect 2.1? 

[Illori]

when it is ready, and not before then

[OCJ]

If there a draft feature list for 2.1?

[Illori]

no not yet and i dont know that their will be any time soon if at all. that is up to the dev team.

[IchBin™]

Many things are in discussion on what to include in SMF2.1. Once we have that list, you will get it soon thereafter.

[movierchives]

I hope the posted urls are shortened, can't think of any other forum software that doesn't already do that, hell even phpbb3 does it

Anyway from whats been said it sounds like 2.1 is just in the head stage at the minute, I just hope its not years

[Kindred]

Why? Short urls are irrelevant.

[Akyhne]

Not irrelevant, but annoying.

[Robert.]

I'm happy with the current url format, I don't see any reason to change them.

[movierchives]

Why? Short urls are irrelevant.

It's all about making posts look smart and huge urls in links doesn't do that which is why all the other forums shorten them.  I think you may be forgetting that SEO can make some links huge

[Kindred]

what "all the other forums" do is not actually a reason to consider something.

No one looks at URLs... they copy/paste or link using the "like" buttons.
If you care that much, then install the pretty urls mod...   but, seriously, search engines don't give two hoots and thus, the URL has little, if any, effect on SEO

[Illori]

i think they mean urls like http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=462326.msg3232328#new get converted into something like http://www.simplemachines.org/community/..... without showing the whole url,

[Kindred]

which, as I said, is pointless and actually impossible...   there has to be some unique url for each message

[Illori]

not in the browser, but when you actually post the url it is shortened

[Kindred]

still pointless....

[holodoc]

I guess he is referring to SEO friendly URLs. If he is then its hardly an irrelevant and pointless feature.

[Kindred]

actually, it is...


so-called "SEO friendly urls" are irrelevant and pointless because the search engines don't CARE. They'll catalog
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=post;topic=462326.0 the exact same as
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/this-message

and, as I already said...  people cut/paste urls or use the like/link buttons on pages.

[Illori]

i dont mean to rewrite the url just to put in the ... so the url is not so long to see.

[holodoc]

actually, it is...


so-called "SEO friendly urls" are irrelevant and pointless because the search engines don't CARE. They'll catalog
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=post;topic=462326.0 the exact same as
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/this-message

and, as I already said...  people cut/paste urls or use the like/link buttons on pages.

Actually its not. "Ugly" URLs do not impact regular indexing algorithms however SEO friendly URLs achieve bonuses in several categories when it comes to calculating keyword relevance, especially with the new Panda algorithm.

Arguing about this would most probably be pointless however claiming that something is useless just because SMF is the only one among top forum software which doesn't provide built in support for SEO friendly URLs is a bit wrong don't you think

[movierchives]

I guess he is referring to SEO friendly URLs. If he is then its hardly an irrelevant and pointless feature.

It is irrelevant though when members post those HUGE urls and they aren't automatically shortened like all other existing forums already do.

Surly it would only be a few bits of code for the dev team to add so whats the harm in doing it?

[Suki]

No harm, I actually like the idea of shorter urls in the messages:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=462326.msg3232435;topicseen#msg3232435

to this:

http://www.simplemachines.org/...#msg3232435

or something like that.

[Kindred]

oh... posting in messages?   ok... that I;m down with.

However, you are incorrect, holodoc...   shortened/pretty urls do not contribute, significantly to any rankings.

[Illori]

that is what i said several times on the last page.... i guess i did not get my point across

[holodoc]

However, you are incorrect, holodoc...   shortened/pretty urls do not contribute, significantly to any rankings.

As I already said we could debate endlessly about this since its considered to be somewhat of a mystery among SEO experts, not to mention the fact that its also subject to frequent changes. However from my years long experience while working in a highly competitive environment where its absolutely imperative to stay ahead of competition the SEO expert teams we hire always insisted on SEO friendly URLs, especially now when Panda is alive, where its all about making the content as accessible as possible to living people. I know that a word against word argumentation is usually meaningless and that these SEO guys can often be a real P.I.T.A. but I really have very strong reasons to believe their judgment and expertise

Either way, I would personally love to see SEO friendly URL support in SMF because almost every modern CMS, forum or blog software today has at least some basic support for them.

[青山 素子]

The last I heard, "friendly" URLs don't offer any real direct benefit and might offer some penalties for highly-competitive keywords for being "over optimized". Given the prevalence of misguided folks, I'm guessing the only major change since the last I read would be removing the penalty part.

Seriously, words in URLs is about as useful as the meta keywords tags. Search engines mostly ignore them as they can be easily gamed. They only really mattered in SEO long ago when certain search engines wouldn't crawl dynamic URLs.

However, if SMF starts moving into a RESTful practice, using shorter informative URLs would make sense as those are fairly natural from that pattern.

[Robert.]

Please NEVER add 'seo friendly' urls. They're useless and the current urls are fine.

[Oldiesmann]

I'm fine with the "shortened URLs" feature as long as it's optional. I've seen far too many users copy the text and paste that instead of copying and pasting the actual link.

I'd much rather see something like what the old Titled Links mod does (again, this would have to be optional because it could be hard on servers and not all hosts allow fsockopen(), which is used by SMF's fetch_web_data function).

[Road Rash Jr.]

Many things are in discussion on what to include in SMF2.1. Once we have that list, you will get it soon thereafter.

@IchBin
A year has past since this thread was started and hijacked into a discusion on SEO friendly URLs. Has there been any progress and a list of changes for SMF2.1 that you said was forth coming? Please provide links to relevant info as the search engine for SMF is deficient.

[Kindred]

Try reading the developers blog?

[IchBin™]

Road Rash,

You can see several different topics about 2.1 in the dev blog area as Kindred pointed out. It's pretty easy to miss at the bottom of the forum so here's a link.
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=129.0

[Road Rash Jr.]

@IchBin
Thanks for the link, I don't normally venture past the News and Updates so I had no idea there was that area. I only found this thread searching for SMF3.

[rodelio.lagahit]

shortened URL's are preferred. this is because most marketers not just SEO wannabe's , would tend to copy /paste their URL's on images and share it on social media sites. even sharing the entire link coming from SMF - looks awful

if the url's are pretty long, they'll use other providers. if this can be embedded as one of the features, the forum especially the url's will surely be user friendly.

[Arantor]

Which is ironic when you think about the resources that people share online, e.g. Facebook items, YouTube videos, G+ posts, which all have non-shortened URLs.

In fact, people are increasingly not caring about the URL in their social-site sharing habits provided the content is good.