# How to remove/hide topic IDs from discourse topic URLs?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-remove-hide-topic-ids-from-discourse-topic-urls/157179
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [July 8, 2020, 7:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-remove-hide-topic-ids-from-discourse-topic-urls/157179 "2020-07-08T19:08:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Faizan\_Zahid](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Faizan_Zahid)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2020, 7:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-remove-hide-topic-ids-from-discourse-topic-urls/157179/1 "2020-07-08T19:08:26Z")
Bacially right now as you see any topic in discourse URL is like this,
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy/157175](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy/157175)
and the same topic opens up from this URL (removed topic ID from URL)
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy)
My forum is getting very big with lots of topics being created every day, so my forum new topics URL are getting too long e.g
[https://mydiscourse.com/t/a-new-topic/2198324528479](https://mydiscourse.com/t/a-new-topic/2198324528479)
That long topic ID at end is what i want to get rid of.
As you notice that my forum has many topics and each time a new topic is created, the topic ID is being incremented, even though if i remove 1 topic and make another topic, the new topic ID is again incremented. Discourse keeps using the deleted topic ID in reserve.
My questions are:
1. How can i change this setting in admin, to by default remove numeric topic IDs from topic URLs, e.g default URLs of my all topics should be like [https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy)
instead of [https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy/157175](https://meta.discourse.org/t/backup-file-size-discrepancy/157175)
I basically want to have my URLs user friendly and search engines friendly, nobody likes long numeric numbers in a URLs especially if the forum has over a million topics, as the numbers are getting very long and longer URLs seems to rank less in search engines and also hard for my users to remember.
2. When i delete a topic in discourse, how can i remove the topic completely from admin so that the old deleted topic ID can be reused and be given to a newly created topic, so that the URLs stay shorter if site has many topics created.
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2020, 7:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-remove-hide-topic-ids-from-discourse-topic-urls/157179/2 "2020-07-08T19:15:26Z")
Neither of these are possible. To do either would require a significant redesign of Discourse. If URLs without topic IDs and/or re-use of IDs is a requirement, I’d suggest picking different software.
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### Author:  [@Faizan\_Zahid](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Faizan_Zahid)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2020, 7:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-remove-hide-topic-ids-from-discourse-topic-urls/157179/3 "2020-07-08T19:20:04Z")
i see, but if i hit a topic URL without entering a topic ID, that topic still serves successfully. So i feel this feature already exists. So i was thinking if there might be any setting which you guys can add in admin to show topic ID or not like a checkbox setting. which users can toggle ON or OFF. If i set it to off then it will rewrite all my topic URLs without topic ID.
But i am thinking how will discourse treat two topics with exact same topic title/url and if i hit it without a topic ID, which topic will be served then?
Also, is there any plugin to do this, and you suggested for a different softwares, what are some of the best discourse alternatives out there which are as good as discourse?
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2020, 7:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-remove-hide-topic-ids-from-discourse-topic-urls/157179/4 "2020-07-08T19:38:06Z")
> [@Faizan\_Zahid](#):
>
> But i am thinking how will discourse treat two topics with exact same topic title/url and if i hit it without a topic ID, which topic will be served then?
Plus, I believe that if someone edit a topic title, all existing links containing only the old title won’t work anymore.
> [@Faizan\_Zahid](#):
>
> Also, is there any plugin to do this, and you suggested for a different softwares, what are some of the best discourse alternatives out there which are as good as discourse?
The two most known Discourse-like Software are [Flarum](https://discuss.flarum.org/), which is in beta, and [NodeBB](https://community.nodebb.org/). Both use IDs in topics URLs.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2020, 7:38pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-remove-hide-topic-ids-from-discourse-topic-urls/157179/5 "2020-08-07T19:38:11Z")
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