Please Give Feedback on New URL Structure for India Forums! - Page 2

Originally posted by: vijay

Hi India Forums Members,

We’re working on improving our URL structure to make it more user-friendly, easier to share, and optimized for search engines (SEO). We’d love to get your feedback on two potential options!

Why Are We Making This Change?

• Clarity: Our current URLs like don’t tell you much about the page. By including the forum name and topic subject, URLs will be easier to understand at a glance.
• Better Sharing: Clear, meaningful URLs make it easier to share links with others since the context is right in the URL.
• SEO: Descriptive URLs help search engines better understand our content, which can lead to better rankings and more visibility.
• Shorter URLs: We also looking at shortening to to make URLs cleaner and more concise, inspired by other popular social and discussion sites that use short and efficient URL structures. Our site name reads indiaforums.com so I assume even new users will understand it is for forum. We are open to suggestions and can keep it as /forum.

Proposed Options for the New URL Structure

Option 1: Use with Lowercase Forum Names

This option shortens "forum" to "f" and uses lowercase forum names, which is consistent with our current URL structure.

Examples:

• Forum: /forum/entertainment
• Topic: /forum/bollywood/11121/this-is-topic-subject
• Long Forum Name: /forum/yeh-rishta-kya-kehlata-hai

Pros:

• SEO-Friendly: Using lowercase is consistent with our current URL structure, and search engines prefer simpler, consistent URLs.
• Shorter URLs: Simple and concise, which is great for sharing and easy to read.
• Consistency: Maintaining lowercase across the site keeps things uniform and easy to manage.

Cons:

• Readability: Longer forum names may be harder to read in lowercase, but they still follow a predictable structure.

Option 2: Use with camelCase Forum Names

This option uses camelCase to make longer forum names more readable by capitalizing the first letter of each word.

Examples:

• Forum: /forum/Entertainment
• Topic: /forum/Bollywood/11121/this-is-topic-subject
• Long Forum: /forum/YehRishtaKyaKehlataHai

Pros:

• Shortens the Text: camelCase helps distinguish between words in longer forum names, which can make the URLs look clearer. However this is what is used by Reddit.

Cons:

• Less SEO-Friendly: Mixed-case URLs add complexity for search engines, and since our site currently uses all lowercase, this would introduce inconsistency.
• Inconsistent Typing: Users might find it harder to type and remember URLs with mixed case, leading to possible confusion.

What We Want to Know

• Which option do you prefer and why?
• Do you think with lowercase or camelCase is more user-friendly?
• How important is it for you to keep URLs short and simple vs. improving readability?

We appreciate your thoughts and feedback as we work to enhance your experience here on India Forums!

Thanks,
The India Forums Team

I like option 1 because i feel its more easier to read even if the url is longer

I would prefer all small letters and no spaces or hyphens or any special characters to be typed between the words... just like on Twitter/X

For example #yehrishtakyakehelatahai or #anupamaa.

Originally posted by: vijay

Hi India Forums Members,

We’re working on improving our URL structure to make it more user-friendly, easier to share, and optimized for search engines (SEO). We’d love to get your feedback on two potential options!

Why Are We Making This Change?

• Clarity: Our current URLs like don’t tell you much about the page. By including the forum name and topic subject, URLs will be easier to understand at a glance.
• Better Sharing: Clear, meaningful URLs make it easier to share links with others since the context is right in the URL.
• SEO: Descriptive URLs help search engines better understand our content, which can lead to better rankings and more visibility.
• Shorter URLs: We also looking at shortening to to make URLs cleaner and more concise, inspired by other popular social and discussion sites that use short and efficient URL structures. Our site name reads indiaforums.com so I assume even new users will understand it is for forum. We are open to suggestions and can keep it as /forum.

Proposed Options for the New URL Structure

Option 1: Use with Lowercase Forum Names

This option shortens "forum" to "f" and uses lowercase forum names, which is consistent with our current URL structure.

Examples:

• Forum: /forum/entertainment
• Topic: /forum/bollywood/11121/this-is-topic-subject
• Long Forum Name: /forum/yeh-rishta-kya-kehlata-hai

Pros:

• SEO-Friendly: Using lowercase is consistent with our current URL structure, and search engines prefer simpler, consistent URLs.
• Shorter URLs: Simple and concise, which is great for sharing and easy to read.
• Consistency: Maintaining lowercase across the site keeps things uniform and easy to manage.

Cons:

• Readability: Longer forum names may be harder to read in lowercase, but they still follow a predictable structure.

Option 2: Use with camelCase Forum Names

This option uses camelCase to make longer forum names more readable by capitalizing the first letter of each word.

Examples:

• Forum: /forum/Entertainment
• Topic: /forum/Bollywood/11121/this-is-topic-subject
• Long Forum: /forum/YehRishtaKyaKehlataHai

Pros:

• Shortens the Text: camelCase helps distinguish between words in longer forum names, which can make the URLs look clearer. However this is what is used by Reddit.

Cons:

• Less SEO-Friendly: Mixed-case URLs add complexity for search engines, and since our site currently uses all lowercase, this would introduce inconsistency.
• Inconsistent Typing: Users might find it harder to type and remember URLs with mixed case, leading to possible confusion.

What We Want to Know

• Which option do you prefer and why?
• Do you think with lowercase or camelCase is more user-friendly?
• How important is it for you to keep URLs short and simple vs. improving readability?

We appreciate your thoughts and feedback as we work to enhance your experience here on India Forums!

Thanks,
The India Forums Team

Option 1

Is Best

Thanks For Always Making India Forums A Great Site To Visit Everyday

New Forum URLs Are Now Live!

Dear India Forums Members,

We are excited to announce that our new forum URL structure is now active! 🎉

After gathering your valuable feedback, we have implemented Option 1, which uses /forum/ with lowercase forum names. This change is aimed at making the URLs simpler, easy to read, and more SEO-friendly.

Examples of the New Forum URLs:

• Forum: /forum/bollywood

• Long Forum Name: /forum/yeh-rishta-kya-kehlata-hai

This update will make it easier to share and navigate forum pages while also improving our site’s visibility on search engines.

What’s Next?

We are still working on updating the topic URLs, and we’ll keep you posted once that change goes live.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback as we make these improvements!

Best,

The India Forums Team

Anything to increase the visibility on search engines is always welcome .

Would love to see all posts of IF as the topmost option in all search engines.

We appreciate the team working behind the scenes .
loving this

https :// www.IndiaForums.com/ forum/love-friendship-dating-and-relationships

I prefer lowercase because it is SEO best practice. URL length can be short and meaningful URLs over overly complex ones. Why sudden URL changes? URL changes if not implemented properly, IF might face temporary or permanent drop in rankings and traffic. The broken links and redirects can harm user experience and SEO. It may take time for search engines to fully re-index the new URL and remove the old one from their results.

Originally posted by: nutmeg7

I prefer lowercase because it is SEO best practice. URL length can be short and meaningful URLs over overly complex ones. Why sudden URL changes? URL changes if not implemented properly, IF might face temporary or permanent drop in rankings and traffic. The broken links and redirects can harm user experience and SEO. It may take time for search engines to fully re-index the new URL and remove the old one from their results.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, and you’re absolutely right to bring up these points!

We’re keeping SEO best practices in mind, which is why we’ve opted for lowercase URLs—they are more SEO-friendly and consistent. We’re also focused on ensuring the URLs remain short and meaningful, as you mentioned, to avoid overly complex structures.

As for the URL changes, we understand the risks involved, especially around SEO impact. That’s why we’re taking extra care with 301 redirects to ensure all old URLs point to the new ones seamlessly. This will help prevent broken links and ensure that search engines properly pass on the ranking signals from the old URLs to the new ones.

We’re also working closely with our development team to minimize any disruption to rankings and traffic during this transition. Although search engines may take some time to re-index the new URLs, proper redirects and other optimizations should help smooth the process. I already see some of the popular ones already showing the new url in Google SERP.

Thank you again for your feedback—it’s important to us as we work to improve the site while keeping user experience and SEO intact!