I was doing some work with bbPress recently and I was looking for a way to take the standard bbPress urls and turn them into something a little more hierarchical and semantic. Currently, they look like:
http://domain.com/forums/forum/name-of-forum/ http://domain.com/forums/topic/name-of-topic/ etc..
Not exactly ideal. It would be better if they looked more like:
http://domain.com/forums/name-of-forum/name-of-topic
So I found this post on the bbPress forums, which led me to this packaged plugin by Ashsh Mohta. However, a few things were busted – new posts, and also paging on forums and topic names that end with “forum/” or “topic/”
With a few modifications, I finally got it working, and here are the steps that I took. Note: This requires a bit of bbPress core hacking, but it’s literally only switching the order of two lines in the code.
- Enable name based permalinks in /bb-admin/options-permalinks.php
- Download the plugin from this page, put it in your my-plugins folder, and enable it
- Change the .htaccess file at the root of your bbPress install to the htaccess.dist file packaged with the plugin.
- Open up bb-post.php at the root of your bbPress install and simply switch lines number 46 and 48
I’m sure this isn’t perfect, and I’d love any and all feedback. It’s been working like a charm for me for a little while now, and hopefully it will help you! I’d love to find both a way to install this and have the plugin automatically backup and rewrite the .htaccess file, and of course a way to do it without editing the core code.
Plugin: Clean Up bbPress Permalinks
Number four in your instructions is missing text. It trails off after ‘and simply switch the…..’
Kind of an important omission!
Without first looking into the plugin, my suggestion for having it work without modifying core code is to make it core code. Submit it to trac as an enhancement request.
Whoops
Sorry about that. Fixed, and I’ll submit it to trac.
Hi, I’ve just followed your instructions and was also able to remove “forum” and “topic” from the urls.
But something is wrong because the pages cannot be found.
Probably I made something wrong with point four were you say that the lines 46 and 48 have to be switched. What do I actually have do do there?
Is it this code?
$link = get_post_link($post_id);$topic = get_topic( $topic_id, false );
Hey Alex,
Thanks for commenting. You are correct – those are the two lines and they should be switched and they should be something like
$topic = get_topic( $topic_id, false );
$link = get_post_link($post_id);
I found a solution for the admin-backend link!
Just ad the following code
RewriteRule ^bb-admin/$ – [L]
…before this code
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)/([^.]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ topic.php?id=$2&page=$3 [L,QSA]
….and it works!
Hi! After 3 hours of brute-force testing, I found a working configuration:
`
# BEGIN bbPress
Options -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /reactable-forum/
#handle admin stuff
RewriteRule ^bb-admin/.*$ – [L,QSA]
# handle the rest
RewriteRule ^page/([0-9]+)/?$ ?page=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ profile.php?id=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/?$ profile.php?id=$1&tab=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ profile.php?id=$1&tab=$2&page=$3 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]+)/?$ profile.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^profile/?$ profile.php [L,QSA] # added
RewriteRule ^rss/?$ rss.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/topics/?$ rss.php?topics=1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/forum/([^/]+)/?$ rss.php?forum=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/forum/([^/]+)/topics/?$ rss.php?forum=$1&topics=1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/topic/([^/]+)/?$ rss.php?topic=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/tags/([^/]+)/?$ rss.php?tag=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/tags/([^/]+)/topics/?$ rss.php?tag=$1&topics=1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/profile/([^/]+)/?$ rss.php?profile=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^rss/view/([^/]+)/?$ rss.php?view=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^tags/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ tags.php?tag=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^tags/([^/]+)/?$ tags.php?tag=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^tags/?$ tags.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^view/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ view.php?view=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^view/([^/]+)/?$ view.php?view=$1 [L,QSA]
# handle forums
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ forum.php?id=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ forum.php?id=$1 [L,QSA] # no ‘?’ before the closing ‘$’ this time: very important!
# handle topics
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/page/([0-9]+)/?$ topic.php?id=$2&page=$3 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ topic.php?id=$2 [L,QSA] # no ‘?’ before the closing ‘$’ this time: very important!
# handle non-existent pages
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [L]
# END bbPress
…of course you have to edit RewriteBase to fit your forum name! =P
Why can’t I edit my own comments? I have to change `RewriteBase` to `/forum/`! =P
Hi!
I’ve implemented 2 functions that grab both “plugin activated” and “plugin deactivated” events in order to swap .htaccess and the new file. Unfortunately you still have to change .htaccess permissions if you want the plugin to update it, but the only other way is manual edit…
I’ve embedded them in the plugin: what do you think would be the better way to publish the updated plugin?
I don’t know how to contact you, but I sent an email to Ashish Mohta asking for his thoughts about the updated plugin.
No answer, so I made a plugin upload request today: “Nicer Permalinks” will be online soon! ^_^