Setting up SEO-friendly URLs

This topic describes the process to set up SEO-friendly URLs.

By default, URLs to locations in your Support Center look like this:

This URLUniform Resource Locator is the address of a web page on the world wide web. includes index.php?, which is necessary for the helpdesk to know where to send the request but is not very attractive to your end-users and it is generally better to have 'clean URLs' listed in search engines.

It is possible to achieve this using functionality called rewrite rules, which are provided by and configured on your web server (rather than GFI HelpDesk).

To set up SEO-friendly URLs, do the following:

1. Edit your helpdesk __swift/config/config.php file
1. Locate the following code in your helpdesk config file, located in ./__swift/config/config.php:
define('SWIFT_BASENAME', 'index.php?');
2. Remove 'index.php?' as value for 'SWIFT_BASENAME', and save the changes
define('SWIFT_BASENAME', '');
2. Configure a rewrite rule in your web server

If you use Apache:

1. If not already present, create a file called .htaccess in the document root of your helpdesk.
2. Paste the following into your .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

 

RewriteCond $1!^(admin|api|console|

favicon\.ico|robots\.txt|sitemap\.xml|

index\.php|tiny_mce_gzip\.php|cron|onsite|staff|

rss|setup|visitor|winapp|wallboard|__swift)

[NC]

RewriteCond $1

!\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|htm|html)$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]

 

RewriteCond $1 !^(favicon\.ico|robots\.txt|

sitemap\.xml|index\.php|tiny_mce_gzip\.php|__swift)

[NC]

RewriteCond $1 !\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|htm|html)$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/(.*)$ $1/index.php?/$2 [L]

</IfModule>

If you use nginx:

1. Open your nginx.conf configuration file (this may be located under /usr/local/nginx/conf/, but it depends how you have configured your nginx web server).
2. Add the following location directive (note that this is the location directive we use on our server - this may vary depending on your configuration, especially if you have custom apps installed):

location ~

^/(admin|api|cron|intranet|rss|setup|

staff|visitor|winapp|__swift|__

swift/cache|__swift/onsite|onsite|__

swift/thirdparty/fusioncharts/Code/FusionCharts|__

swift/thirdparty/fusioncharts/

Charts|__swift/themes|__swift/javascript/__

global/thirdparty/TinyMCE/plugins)(.*)$ {

try_files $uri $uri/ /$1/index.php?$2;

}