Look at an arbitrary URL: say viewtopic.php?f=28&t=108913. It doesn't tell you anything. The modern way is to have URLs like, say, http://css-tricks.com/forums/discussion ... e-function - search engines like it more but more importantly for me, when I'm referring someone to a thread they get a quick idea of what it is about.

While I'm no expert on this topic, these are sometimes called RESTful urls because they allow for implementing the REST (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representa ... e_transfer) architectural style.

I don't know if phpBB has a plugin or whether you'd have to convert to an entirely new forum software, but it's something ton consider.

phpBB doesn't seem to have a plugin for that, and neither do we plan to switch our forum software. We might come up with our own plugin at some point if we have more manpower again, but to be honest, it is no major issue. Search engines do not only qualify a website due to their url system, it is just one factor out of a dozen.

While I'm no expert on this topic, these are sometimes called RESTful urls because they allow for implementing the REST (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representa ... e_transfer) architectural style.

I would better call it SEO friendly urls in this case, as it is obviously missleading. Implementing a REST api does not mean we need to fix our URLs first. Those are 2 separate topics. Actually, 1 or 2 years back we were experimenting to implement the OCS specification, which is based on REST, and it worked quite good without any change to our basic URL system (the problem in the end was the OCS spec in itself, which is not very compatible with the nature of this forum).