Change of all page addresses!

Hey guys,

I just uploaded the latest NS code. Included was a feature where all of the web addresses for each page has changed.

In the past, the address of a page may look like:

https://newschoolers.com/ns3/web/forums/forumthreads.php?cat_id=3

Although this is prefectly normal, it has a few shortcomings. First off, when we eventually upgrade the NS code from the "version 3" we are using now, this address would change. This is a pain in the ass, since links that people post in forums & images would all broken.

The second problem, is because the page used variables like "?cat_id=3" to tell the page "forumthreads.php" which category to display, Google (and other search engines) would not read the page for each category. Search engine crawlers do not index pages with arguments.

The new model we use now is like this:

https://newschoolers.com/web/forums/forumthreads/cat_id/3/

If you look closely, the web address is slightly modified from above. Instead of using the question mark and equals sign to include arguments, they are displayed like a directory with slashes in between. We've also removed the "ns3" part from the address.

With this new style of page address, google can now index every page, every image, every forum thread, etc... And now that the "ns3" part is removed, any major code upgrade in the future would not result in the page addresses being changed! We've also removed the ".php" from page names, so we can eventually upgrade to a different technology without changing page addresses.

I know this sounds minor, but being able to search NS from google will be super handy. It will take Google a few weeks to crawl the site. Once they have a index of our content, we will add the ability to search NS from google in our search bar at the top of the page.

Enjoy all, As always, report any problems in this forum.

~Paul