Enabling friendly URLs for forum posts

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Forums display content based on the current values of the forumid and threadid query string parameters. By default, the URL of a forum thread might look like the following:

  • <domain>/Forums.aspx?forumid=3&threadid=12

A friendly URL of the same forum thread looks like the following:

  • <domain>/Forums/f4/t13/Frequently-asked-questions.aspx

Having your forum URLs in this format is a good search engine optimization (SEO) practice.

Enabling friendly URLs

For friendly URLs for forum posts to be enabled, you must do the following two tasks:

  1. Set the following properties of the Forum group web part:
    • Use friendly URLs: enabled
    • Friendly base URL - enter the base part of the URL, which is displayed after the domain name, e.g. /Forums for the example above and for the document aliases listed below.
    • URL extension - extension that will be used at the end of the friendly URL.
  2. Assign the following document aliases to the document containing the Forum group web part. The /Forums part of each alias must be equal to the value in the Friendly base URL property of the Forum group web part:
    • /Forums/f{forumid}/{anything}
    • /Forums/f{forumid}/fp{fpage}/{anything}
    • /Forums/f{forumid}/t{threadid}/{anything}
    • /Forums/f{forumid}/fp{fpage}/t{threadid}/{anything}
    • /Forums/f{forumid}/t{threadid}/tp{tpage}/{anything}
    • /Forums/f{forumid}/fp{fpage}/t{threadid}/tp{tpage}/{anything}

Single forum friendly URLs

If you want to enable friendly URLs for a single forum, the Forum (Single forum - General) web part should be set the same way as described in step 1, but only the following two document aliases need to be added to the document:

  • /Forums/t{threadid}/{anything}
  • /Forums/t{threadid}/tp{tpage}/{anything}