UBB.Developers Forums UBB.classic V6.4 - 6.7 Modifications V6 Mod Ideas Gotta love those really long thread URL's... NOT!

Seriously, the thread URL's are way to long.... not good for those who use text based newsletters to promote discussions (which usually truncate after 77 characters or so when the line wraps on most e-mail systems)

For example, what used to take only 55 characters: http://www.cheftalkcafe.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000109.html

Now takes 86 to go to the same location: http://www.cheftalkcafe.com/cgi-local/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=000109

This just concerns me. I know HTML coding would solve that, but that's not really the point here (as you have text vs. HTML e-mail signup). The point is that a shorter URL would probably be a better user interface (rather than having to set up redirects and add a whole lot of work).

I know everything is more dynamic now, but it just seems like some of the calls and queries could be a lot shorter. Does anyone else have this concern or think a mod would solve such a thing?

[ February 07, 2001: Message edited by: Tannerman ]

Well, I've got a hack working on a test board (1 user, private site, closed registration) that shortens the URL for the topics by 18 characters. The URL for this thread would be: https://www.ubbdev.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?8.001023

If you wanted the second page: https://www.ubbdev.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?8.001023.2

It seems to be working fine, it just requires a lot of search and replace. I'll probably release it when UBB6 comes out of beta, and I'll write up a script that does all the replacements automatically, so you won't have to sift through all the code.

Hm.

Leshrac, why use ?string rather than ?X=string? That way you could catch X and manually change ubb=get_topic internally without needing to check the query string yourself...

Because it's that many extra characters. What I do now is simply translate the query string via a regexp. I put this little bit of code in ultimatebb.cgi right after $ubb is first assigned:The UBB then thinks it got a recognizable query string and proceeds along normally.

Bah, shortcuts...

Make a script that u can link to, such as: http://www.cheftalkcafe.com/cgi-local/bblink.cgi?f=7&t=000109
f = forum
t = topic

You can plug in the stuff and have the cgi do all the rest and forward the user given the info supplied.

Further more... see below:
http://www.nfscheats.com/users/DPK/scripts/cgi_perl/bblink.txt

Rename it to .cgi and also note that you need cgi-lib.pl to run this. I provide no support for this script and am not to be responsible for any damage. Modify the general info to get it to run.

I tried friggin' with mod_rewrite and came up with this, its probably pretty cruddy, so, someone can fix it up if they'd like:

02/12/01 :: a couple minor fixes/additions, take it for what its worth...

[note, you can add "[R]" in the fourth tab'ed column so that it'll redirect to the long URL instead of showing the short URL]

chuck that into a .htaccess file in your /ubb/ dir and your urls go from:

http://www.whatever.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=6&t=000086&p=2

to
http://www.whatever.com/ubb/6/000086/2

39 chars shorter... (in this case)

[ February 12, 2001: Message edited by: MC_Mouse ]