Include prefix in URLs?

Hi there, is it possible to include the chosen prefix for a topic into it's URL? For example:

3D Modelling: Human head is now resolved to something like

Code:

http://www.myurl.com/human-head.html

, but I need it to be more like

Code:

http://www.myurl.com/3d-modelling-human-head.html

Possible?! Thanks!

In case if thread title is "3D Modelling: Human head", the URL should be created as your second example.

Well, I guess you got me wrong here. The bold part of the example above was thought of as the prefix, which is not part of the threadtitle, but which I want to be included in the URLs.

Do you want to add the same prefix for all thread URLs?

I want to add the chosen prefix for a thread to be part of the URL. But then again, I don't know if this would be preferable at all. I just wanted to keep my old link structure intact.

Thank you!

I'm not sure I understand, do you want to add it to a single thread or to ALL threads?

To all threads, that have prefixes assigned.

Thread prefixes are an official feature of vBulletin since version 3.7.0 and you completely forgot to include the thread prefixes in your vBSEO-product. I really need to include thread-prefixes into the search-engine-friendly URLs because I also did that as long as I was using vRewrite. I ordered vBSEO today and after installing it, I had to notice that this very importand feature is missing completely. This means, that vBSEO is useless and I can't replace vRewrite with vBSEO because if I did that, more than 90% of my thread-URLs would change because of the missing thread prefix.

Finally someone who understands what I'm talking about. Hallelujah!

It's really an essential feature and I'm pretty unhappy about the lack thereof. Any chances this will be implemented in a future release?

Words can't express how frustrated I was today after I realized that I ordered a piece of software that I can't use because of the reason mentioned above.

I am using vBulletin's thread prefix feature for almost every thread in my forum. My forum is about cellphones and every thread prefix stands for one cellphone model. Before ordering vBSEO, I was using a modded version of vRewrite and this plugin was able to include thread prefixes into the search-engine-friendly URLs (I did this vRewrite-hacking myself).
Now I bought vBSEO a few days ago because it has been mentioned that it supports the new vBulletin 3.7.0 features and now I have to realize that it doesn't support all of them.
I really need to include thread prefixes in thread-urls because of 2 reasons:

1. There is nothing more SEO-relevant for a thread in my forum than the cellphone model (=thread prefix).
   Example: which URL looks more relevant for search engines?
   http://forum.mydomain.com/firmware.html
   or
   http://forum.mydomain.com/iphone-firmware.html
   where iphone is the thread prefix?
2. About 90% of all my already indexed thread-URLs would change because of the missing thread-prefix in vBSEO's thread-urls. This is inacceptable and could be called the "worst case" in case of search engine optimization.

I already wrote an email to the vBSEO-support and told them that I would really appreciate if they could tell me how to include thread prefixes in the thread-urls. I know that there is no such option, but I am a very experienced PHP-programmer and I would also be satisfied if they could only tell me which file I have to edit to insert the thread prefixes into the urls.
But I did not receive a reply immediately (I didn't expect that during the weekend) and tried to solve the problem myself. I live in Germany and in such situations we say "Was nicht passt, wird passend gemacht". If I translate that into english, it says: "If something doesn't fit, we'll make it fit".

It took me almost 30 minutes to locate the correct lines of code and then it took only one more minute to modify 5 lines of code. Here we go:

1. In functions_vbseo_vb.php replace
   PHP Code:

   select t.forumid, t.threadid, 

   with
   PHP Code:

   select t.forumid, t.prefixid, t.threadid, 

2. In functions_vbseo_vb.php replace
   PHP Code:

   $thread['seotitle'] = vbseo_filter_replace_text($thread['title']); 

   with
   PHP Code:

   $thread['seotitle'] = vbseo_filter_replace_text(($thread['prefixid'] != "" ? str_replace('_', '-', $thread['prefixid']) . ' ' : '') . $thread['title']); 

3. In functions_vbseo.php replace
   PHP Code:

   $vbseo_gcache['thread'][$tid]['seotitle'] = vbseo_filter_replace_text($tar['title'] ? $tar['title'] : $tar['threadtitle']); 

   with
   PHP Code:

   $vbseo_gcache['thread'][$tid]['seotitle'] = vbseo_filter_replace_text(($tar['prefixid'] != "" ? str_replace('_', '-', $tar['prefixid']) . ' ' : '') . ($tar['title'] ? $tar['title'] : $tar['threadtitle'])); 

4. In functions_vbseo_createurl.php replace
   PHP Code:

   $thread['seotitle'] = vbseo_filter_replace_text($thread['title'] ? $thread['title'] : $thread['threadtitle']); 

   with
   PHP Code:

   $thread['seotitle'] = vbseo_filter_replace_text(($thread['prefixid'] != "" ? str_replace('_', '-', $thread['prefixid']) . ' ' : '') . ($thread['title'] ? $thread['title'] : $thread['threadtitle'])); 

5. Repeat step 4 one more time (because this line appears 2 times in functions_vbseo_createurl.php)
6. Send an email to the vBSEO-support telling them that they should make this an official option in vBSEO which is called "include thread prefixes in thread urls: yes/no".
7. Repeat step 6 three times
8. Tell your friends to do step 6 ...just kidding. that was pretty much it. Only 5 lines of code need to be changed. And if Crawlability Inc would fulfill our wishes, the number of steps could decrease to zero.

It should be noted that this solution displays the prefix-ID and not the the prefix-name. But that's ok for me because prefix-ID and prefix-name are always the same in my forum. If your prefix-names are different from your prefix-IDs, this solution needs some additional tweaking.

I hope that helps and good night to everyone (time to go to bed in Germany now)
Andy

Wow, if this really works, you will be my personal hero until proven otherwise! Or as we'd like to say in German: "Geile Scheiße!"

Thanks a lot!

If your prefix-names are different from your prefix-IDs, this solution needs some additional tweaking.

Well, yes. I'm in need of additional tweaking, but I can't fix this myself for I'm not capable of PHP.

It would be great if someone from the vbSEO-team could get involved into this. I think Keyser Soze already gave you guys a superb headstart, didn't he?!

Thanks again. I'm still hoping for the best!

No news on this? I'm really looking forward to an implementation of prefixes in SEO URLs... My IDs don't match the prefix-names either, so Keyser Soze's solution doesn't work for me...

Also eagerly waiting for any piece of info on this!

I agree this should be a vBSEO option.

I was very surprised that it was not included.