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• **unknown user**
  
  

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  Posted: Mar 05, 2007 - 11:36 AM

  URL's for the profile of userpages are made using the nickname. Since it's an option in the admin to change nicknames, this the urls can become invalid if a nickchange has been done. Resulting in any backlinks to fail.
  
  Some urls might not even work, where there are nicks used starting with a slash. By only using the user-id. The urls are being always valid (unless the user has been removed).
  
  Now nickchanges might not be something that's done often, but since it can be done, the system should use the ID, since that doesn't change.
  
  So, al links to user profile should use the ID, and not the nickname in the $_GET. For exotic language or nicks with weird characters in it, this is mostlikely to fail. As what I've seen on .7 for that matter.
  
  Nicks should be stored in tables, only the user-id.

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• Bad_Dude
  
  

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  Posted: Mar 05, 2007 - 04:16 PM

  Edited
  
  
  
  edited by: Bad_Dude, Mar 06, 2007 - 05:03 AM
  
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• markwest
  
  

  • Rank: Team Member
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  Posted: Mar 06, 2007 - 12:34 AM

  The flip-side of this argument is that, like including the title of an article in the URL, the resultant URL is much easier more human friendly. So my profile could either be /Profile/view/markwest or /Profile/view/1234567....
  
  But I take your point and i'll look to make this a configurable option - like we already have with the news module.
  
  -Mark
  
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• kaffeeringe.de
  
  

  • Rank: Software Foundation
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  Posted: Mar 06, 2007 - 01:54 AM

  3rd option: /Profile/view/1234567/markwest
  
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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Mar 16, 2002
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  Posted: Mar 06, 2007 - 03:59 AM

  When a user regs his/her nick as what I've seen on other communities: /dev/null the URL with the nick in it, result in an error. Exotic nicks, or non us-ascii nicks, tend to break the site.
  
  As people can choose there own nicks, it can even be weird characters. Then another thing is, the amount of different charsets used for language files.
  
  So, links in the entire CMS should be using the ID. In that case, you don't get errors, or lay-out mess-up due to characters that are used be deviding variables..
  
  A site should work, regardless of the choise of nickname is. In the case of using the nick in the URL (profile and messaging), it tends to break.. Using only the ID, it always works...

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• Simon
  
  

  • Rank: Legend
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  Posted: Mar 06, 2007 - 06:14 AM

  Quote

  As people can choose there own nicks, it can even be weird characters.

  
  The regex on user registration doesn't allow strange characters in usernames as far as I know, since this causes all sorts of other problems with character sets and display of usernames.
  
  I thought the point of all the short urls work was to create SEF, human readable URLs, in which case reverting to using the ID seems to defeat the point. Also, since a user can't change his/her nickname, the amount of times when a change of username occurs is going to be pretty small, even on a very large site.
  
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• **unknown user**
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
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  Posted: Mar 06, 2007 - 06:56 AM

  HammerHead

  Quote

  As people can choose there own nicks, it can even be weird characters.

  
  The regex on user registration doesn't allow strange characters in usernames as far as I know, since this causes all sorts of other problems with character sets and display of usernames.
  

  
  As what base are your checking that? If I register on a page that's ISO-8859-1, and I fill in a nick like: Arië
  PHP sees it at just that..
  Due to the multilingual, and each language to have it's own charset, And i register that same nick, but on a page that's send to me as UTF-8, PHP will see this: Arië
  
  1 nick, 2 different content, due to the charset that can be different. In which case, is a nick flagged as 'nick has strange characters' ?
  
  Looks to me this can't be checked at all times. Making links from language 1, using ISO-8859-1, linking to a nick that registered in language 2, using UTF-8, not work. When you use the ID only, this doesn't happen.
  

  Quote

  
  I thought the point of all the short urls work was to create SEF, human readable URLs, in which case reverting to using the ID seems to defeat the point.

  
  I've never came across a site that didn't have SEF (Search Engine Friendly) urls, that wasn't indexed. Links get followed, as long as they are valid.
  
  Looking at the part: 'human readable' is nice, but an URL as this thread:
  module-Forum-viewtopic-topic-51950-start-0
  
  isn't more readable then:
  index.php?module=Forum&func=viewtopic&topic=51950&start=0
  
  People ain't going to remember the 'human readable' part for that matter. And for SEO/SEF is really doesn't add a thing. Using the shorturls, without redirecting the normal urls, the only it really does, is duplicating content.
  

  Quote

  
  Also, since a user can't change his/her nickname, the amount of times when a change of username occurs is going to be pretty small, even on a very large site.

  
  My point is, it can be done, and if it can be done, it should work as intended. Your idea is the ideal-world kinda of thinking.
  
  What if someone writes a module where people can change there nick?

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• Simon
  
  

  • Rank: Legend
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  Posted: Mar 06, 2007 - 08:53 AM

  Quote

  If I register on a page that's ISO-8859-1

  
  Except we're converting the codebase to UTF-8... and hopefully you wouldn't have two different charsets on the same site?
  
  

  Quote

  I've never came across a site that didn't have SEF (Search Engine Friendly) urls, that wasn't indexed.

  
  Here I agree, I have said this for a long time...
  
  

  Quote

  My point is, it can be done, and if it can be done, it should work as intended. Your idea is the ideal-world kinda of thinking.

  
  That's as maybe, but I'd rather have the URL show the username on my site (I certainly could remember a username URL better than a ID URL), I can cope with 1 or 2 404's on my site, because it's not going to damage my ranking that much. If you can't, that's fine too, and shortly you'll have an option to turn URLs back into IDs. The option will be there, though I suspect most people will want human readable URLs, so that will be the default.
  
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• markwest
  
  

  • Rank: Team Member
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  Posted: Mar 06, 2007 - 09:44 AM

  As a further example of where using usernames would work fine would be the university where I work. Our user names are of a fixed format (staff based on payroll, students based on student ID). In this case using usernames in the URL to the profile would be desirable. Using user id's would be confusing as our users already consider the username to be a user id of sorts.
  
  RaZ - you must understand that the right solution for you isn't the case for everyone else.
  
  -Mark
  
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