What is a search engine friendly URL?

KBPublisher records are stored in a database. When you wish to read an article, KBPublisher sends a request to the database to get this record for you. This request is usually sent as a query string, and in its native form it looks something like:

http://yoursitename.com/kb/index.php?view=entry&entryID=90.

This works well to get the record back, but most search engines, Google excepted, will not index pages with question marks (?) or ampersands (&) in the name.

To get around this, we use a search engine friendly URL. This converts the query to something more like:

1. http://yoursitename.com/kb/entry/90
2. http://yoursitename.com/kb/Search-engine-friendly-URLs_90.html

which contains only characters that search engines recognize, and therefore will the record will be found by the search engine.

Not only that, when sending a link to someone else, it makes a lot more sense, and is a lot less error prone, to send a link http://yoursitename.com/kb/entry/90 than to send http://yoursitename/kb/index.php?view=entry&entryID=90.

How do I set up a search engine friendly URL?

• Log onto KBPublisher as an administrator
• Choose the Settings menu
• Click on the Public Area -> Common tab
• Go to the Titles / Meta section and choose an appropriate option from the Search Engine Friendly URL drop down list.

You have four options:

• • Automatic uses the default set up when KBPublisher was installed
  • Type 1: kb/entry/[article_id] gives the friendly URL - http://yoursitename.com/kb/entry/90
  • Type 2: kb/entry/[article_title]_[article_id].html gives the friendly URL - http://yoursitename.com/kb/Search-engine-friendly-URLs_90.html
  • Do not use search engine friendly URL means exactly what it says.
    Your link to the article mentioned above would be http://yoursitename.com/kb/index.php?view=entry&entryID=90

Note:

• "Search Engine Friendly URL" works on Apache web server with mod_rewrite enabled.
• On IIS you can set it up with IIS ModRewrite or similar tools.