One of the new features in KnowledgeBuilder 3.x is support for what we call search-friendly URLs. These are URLs which, when indexed by a search engine and when read by a human, explain what the page is about. An article, for example, could include its title right in the URL, just as you might see for a blog post in Wordpress.
The main drawback to this feature is that it requires a little bit of technical work to configure it. You will also need Apache's mod_rewrite plugin, which most web hosts support. Before you can use the feature, it's a good idea to set up the rewrite rules using Apache's .htaccess file.
Configuring your .htaccess file
KnowledgeBuilder ships with a file, example.htaccess, which contains the commands necessary for KnowledgeBuilder to use search-friendly URLs. You can find this in the software's main directory. To use it, you'll first need to rename it to ".htaccess"; it won't work if it's left as "example.htaccess".
Once you do that, you'll need to make some changes to your .htaccess file. You'll see several instances of the letters "/KBURI/". These letters need to be changed to the directory path in the URL of your software. I know that sounds a bit complicated--maybe an example would help. If your KnowledgeBuilder is installed as http://my.domain.com/kb/, then the directory path is "/kb/". It's everything immediately following "my.domain.com", including the slash. Here, you would change "/KBURI/" to "/kb/".
The two lines which would change look like this in the default .htaccess file:
RewriteBase /KBURI/
and
RewriteRule . /KBURI/index.php [L]
These would change to:
RewriteBase /kb/
and
RewriteRule . /kb/index.php [L]
Telling KnowledgeBuilder you want search-friendly URLs
That was the hard part. The easy part is telling KnowledgeBuilder to start using these new URLs.
First, log into the admin side of KnowledgeBuilder. You must log in as the "admin" user. When you're there, click on the Settings link; this will take you to the main settings screen. On the first tab you see, General, locate a checkbox labeled "Use search-friendly URLs". Check that checkbox.
That's it! Your KnowledgeBuilder software is now configured to use search-friendly URLs.
