DNN 7 - Enable Language Parameter in URLs inconsistent
When disabling the language culture ID injection into the URL of DNN portals you only will get a cosmetic change and only a "PARTIAL" change.
You can easily prove this issue by changing the URL culture injection in the language module settings and then simply logout of the portal admin. you will notice that there are flags in the login area where you can then choose the language to use (by the way, that cant be disabled properly either) and click on one of the languages for and page that is visible in the menu. Notice then the URL for that page has "INJECTED" the culture ID and the pages content is then shown. if you click on the menu again it disappears from the URL. It does this for every resouces that is in the menu!!!!!!
Of course, THE ONLY FIX TO THIS ISSUE AVAILABLE is disabling ENGLISH. Then the problem disappears. A work around that will cause lots of issues and wont work in all instances of being crawled by the bots is to disallow those URLS directories. But the links are still in the code and google will still follow the links in some instances of their crawls and then there will be the unfortuneate discover of duplicate content. Now goole is being nicer about duplicate content but there is still the issues of which page becomes canonical.... so then you will still have to add manually a canonical reference to each page politely informing google how to sort out this mess. That would then leave us with the fact that GOOGLE will then give a slight performance penalty to each page and in the sum of the site that could result in just enought penalty that you miss number one top position :-(
I hope that someone from DNN that has the authority to get somthing done will take this issue to heart and ensure that it gets fixed. This problem has existed since at least DNN 6.2.x where I first started reporting this issue and after a lot of trial and error (working with Sebastian Leupold) I was asked to report it to the support team! I did indeed report the issue and the first person who looked at the problem escalated the support case to requiring a fix, but the guy that was to fix it decided it wasnt an issue and simply deleted my case and I was never able to get it resolved.
I have to admit, this is the only instance working with DNN support or forum members where I was completely let down. He just dropped the ball and gave me no opportunity to argue my case. Think he must have had stress issues or something.
Hope someone out there is paying attention,
Bill