webhead

Well I did some digging around in the board files and I think I've found the solution. I'm going to post it here because I hate when people say they've found a solution and then don't share. If anyone wants to check my work and make sure this all looks legit (it appears to be working), I would more than welcome the input.

You will need to change some of the code in the Unreal Portal skin.

• Go to your Admin CP => Look & Feel => Manage Skin Sets & Templates and then choose the skin you wish to edit
  
• Make sure that "Template" is selected and scroll down to "skin_uportal"
  
• Choose skin_uportal => latest_posts_big_row and skin_uportal => latest_posts_row
  
• Replace the code as noted below:
  
  
  
  skin_uportal => latest_posts_big_row
  
  Replace:
  

  	<a href='{parse url="showtopic={$fetch['tid']}" template="showtopic" seotitle="{$fetch['title']}" base="public"}'
              		title="{$this->lang->words['topic_started']}{$fetch['start_date']}">{$fetch['title']}</a><br/>
  	

  
  
  With:
  

  	<a href='{$this->registry->output->buildSEOUrl( 'showtopic=' . $fetch['tid'], 'public', $fetch['title_seo'], 'showtopic' )}">{$fetch['title']}</a><br/>
  	

  
  
  skin_uportal => latest_posts_row
  
  Replace:
  

  	<a href='{parse url="showtopic={$fetch['tid']}&amp;view=getnewpost" template="showtopic" seotitle="{$fetch['title']}" base="public"}'>{$fetch['title']}</a><br/>
  	

  
  
  With:
  

  	<a href='{$this->registry->output->buildSEOUrl( 'showtopic=' . $fetch['tid'] . '&amp;view=getnewpost', 'public', $fetch['title_seo'], 'showtopicunread' )}'>{$fetch['title']}</a><br/>
  	

  
  
• Save both of these template bits and then go check your site to make sure you didn't paste anything wrong. I myself have pasted the code incorrectly a couple times. It is imperative that you keep the { and } in there or an error will be thrown up when you try to save.

What exactly is the purpose of this? IPB has a built in SEO URL conversion function (as you can see in the replaced code). Far as I can tell, this simply takes out some of the nasty crap that makes it into URL titles and gives you something nice and clean. Percent signs (%) in particular give the bad header error sometimes because of the weird combinations they work their way into...a % sign and then a space, for instance. This should also stop any other goofy stuff that people might try and stick into topic titles and URLs.