There’s no such thing as a smooth transition these days. It appears that the even planned anxiety can be challenged with unexpected problems.

Most of my free “hobby” time is spent on vbulletin-based forums. My experience with vbulletin doesn’t yet span half of my total experience in building and managing communities, but I feel that my technical expertise and knowledge of the vbulletin system is greater than anything I’ve ever used. VB was never perfect, but it isn’t difficult to apply some creativity and mold it to what is needed.

The true Tragedy is that whatever the new vbulletin 4 becomes, it’s potential may never be realized. Although there are many, including myself, that are emphasizing a sit-and-wait approach over making a change – it appears that the revolt has grown greater and faster than I thought. Consultants and Lawyers write about this as an example of what not to do as a brand-retention strategy, and other news/blogs are more focused on the customer perception than the potential of the new version.

Can the remaining steadfast take whatever vb 4.0 becomes and transform it into impressive communities that attract participation? There are frequent improvements every time I check the vbulletin website, but can’t visualize or make a connection that would encourage a normal user to contribute. I like the direction the software is going, but they are going to need some well-developed communities to build the trust enjoyed by the previous jelsoft organization. The current licensing and pricing isn’t going to help.

Search Engines have been indexing and cataloging all types of websites, and have improved over the years. I didn’t rewrite URLs on TriumphRat.Net for several years and it was indexed in search engines just fine. In fact, I didn’t have to submit the site to search engines or generate any sort of sitemap either. Near the end of my tenure on Rat.Net, URL rewrites and Sitemaps were implemented with positive results that were frequently described as expotential.

So if rewritten URLs aren’t “technically” necessary why go through the trouble?

The bottom line is that while some search engines can index pages regardless of format, many search engines cannot. Also, if you depend on link popularity with other sites and search engines it doesn’t hurt to remove ampersands, question-marks, and other characters common with dynamic URLs.

From a useability standpoint, discussion forum owners frequently debate the value that users place on “friendly” URLs. For this site, a rewritten URL doesn’t offer much. I do it, but probably not in a format that is easily understandable. On Motorcycles International, user-friendly examples are:

http://www.motorcyclesintl.net/triumph
http://www.motorcyclesintl.net/ducati

From a content cataloging and advertising standpoint, it is much easier for marketers to create channels that associate to keywords in URLs. This is a commonly overlooked issue represents a technology/opportunity that frankly many webmasters don’t take time to learn about or implement. It also works well for grouping content.

Benefits improve with feature-rich products like vbSEO and other similar plugins for dicussion forums. One can tune a variety of options and preferences, governed on what the webmaster believes in.