Please Give Feedback on New URL Structure for India Forums!

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

Why Your Feedback Matters

Changing the URL structure is not something we can do frequently. It’s a long-term decision that needs to be well thought out. Once we update the URLs, they will be part of how the site is indexed, shared, and accessed for the foreseeable future. That’s why we want to make sure we’re implementing a structure that works best for you, the community, and the site’s growth.

Fixed the topic as the URL were not showing.

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

Quick question, topic names have character limit of 70(?) won't that make it the un longer incase of such Forum names (irrespective of the case?)

Dear Vijay and our hardworking technical team , you have always tried to make things more user friendly for our members, and here is another such update from you .

Am sure this is going to make things better. This is an advancement over the pervious difficult to remember urls , and by seeing the urls I could never guess which place it is from .

Happy to know there is going to be an improvement .

Originally posted by: oh_nakhrewaali

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

Quick question, topic names have character limit of 70(?) won't that make it the un longer incase of such Forum names (irrespective of the case?)

Great question, and you’re absolutely right to point that out!

While the forum names themselves can be quite long (especially for popular shows like Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai), we are mindful of keeping the overall URL length manageable.

For topic names, even though they do have a character limit (currently 70 characters), we will be working to ensure that the URLs remain as concise as possible. This may include limiting the number of characters from the topic title that appear in the URL, trimming overly long titles while maintaining clarity, or even using slugs to shorten names.

The goal is to make URLs readable and shareable while also ensuring they don’t become too lengthy or complicated.

Thanks for raising this point! Your feedback helps us fine-tune these changes.

Vijay,

I appreciate your efforts in making this forum more user friendly.

My personal choice is CamelCase. I use CamelCase in all my document titles. I am not sure whether I can compare document titles with URLs.

I thought search engines are not case sensitive.

Cheers..

Since this topic is discussing lengths of the URLs…..am asking you to allow me to go a little off topic because I want to request you to increase the character limit in headers of topics .. as it becomes tough to add something additional without editing out or shortening the existing title .

Please do check if that is feasible

Shorter URLs are my preference because they are easy to read, simple to share, and concise. The message it gives to members should be evident and unambiguous.

This website is more user-friendly and a pleasant place for all of us to interact with, thanks to the ongoing process of improvisation with a few creative ideas introduced by you at frequent intervals. Thank you, Vijay, for giving importance to the community's views and comfort levels.

Originally posted by: Viswasruti

Shorter URLs are my preference because they are easy to read, simple to share, and concise. The message it gives to members should be evident and unambiguous.

This website is more user-friendly and a pleasant place for all of us to interact with, thanks to the ongoing process of improvisation with a few creative ideas introduced by you at frequent intervals. Thank you, Vijay, for giving importance to the community's views and comfort levels.

I agree. Shorter URLs are better for all the reasons you mentioned above.