Vbulletin CMs Articles or Thread Promotion to articles

[RichieBoy67]

Hey,

I am just curious about how you all utilize the cms. We added some cms pages awhile ago and the idea is to use them with the forums. My question is, is it better to create the forum thread and then promote it to an article or create the articles in the cms and share them to the forum.

I am just trying to get some opinions. There is a great mod here that shows the entire cms article in the forum but with the amount of articles we have it gets confusing and the articles show as regular threads but cannot be edited except through the cms.

I would not even bother doing both and would just stick with the cms but the forums get much more visibility.

Is there an seo duplicate content issue with promoting threads to articles?

Thanks

Feel free to share any other cms tips you have.:)

[RichieBoy67]

Bumpy bump

[DemOnstar]

I tried the CMS and the mod you are talking about.
I also heard of duplicate content having some kind of penalty.

I still use the CMS for articles, it is good for that but there are problems with comments and pictures and it isn't really worth the effort.
The integration of CMS and forums is better done manually.
By that I mean the thread that is created by the CMS is better posted in an invisible forum. I believe this is established practice.

What I do now is create the article (turn off comments) and then create a link for comments to another forum that is created by myself. It is much easier for comments to be added, it is more manageable and also negates the duplicate content and the attachment issues.

[RichieBoy67]

I tried the CMS and the mod you are talking about.
I also heard of duplicate content having some kind of penalty.

I still use the CMS for articles, it is good for that but there are problems with comments and pictures and it isn't really worth the effort.
The integration of CMS and forums is better done manually.
By that I mean the thread that is created by the CMS is better posted in an invisible forum. I believe this is established practice.

What I do now is create the article (turn off comments) and then create a link for comments to another forum that is created by myself. It is much easier for comments to be added, it is more manageable and also negates the duplicate content and the attachment issues.

Thanks,

I am a little confused about how you do your comments. What do you mean you create a link for the comments to a forum that is created by itself?

Is there any chance of me seeing your system?

--------------- Added 13 Jun 2014 at 12:22 ---------------

Oh yeah, Regarding the mod that shows the cms article in the forum, I believe it only links the article basically so I do not believe this will have a duplicate content issue. The only issue with this method is that the main post cannot be edited without going into the cms.

Promoting the threads to articles seems more problematic in duplicate content terms but at times this has to be done for certain very popular threads.

I was also thinking of a mod or plug in that would add a meta or something to block those promoted threads from being crawled in the cms page. I have to think about this more though but a simple nofollow meta would block them from being crawled. I am just not sure how to implement it on individual cms articles.

[DemOnstar]

Better to demonstrate I think.
No problem Rich, have a look here http://www.mightymoiety.com/content.php

Look to the bottom of every article and you will find a link to the manually created forum.
When you arrive at the forum, you will find another link back to the article.

Not sure if it is a good system but it works for me.

Also check here http://www.mightymoiety.com/forumdisplay.php/30-Observations for the forum dedicated to article comments.

[RichieBoy67]

Interesting but my site is set up differently. We use the main page as a way to promote certain events, etc

http://musclemecca.com/Now I can create some of these events directly in the cms and then the mod will post them into a forum, I will move them to the forum of my choice but then the issue is that we get some commenting in the cms and others in the forums. The Vbulletin cms is really a very confusing system.

[DemOnstar]

The Vbulletin cms is really a very confusing system.

Agreed.
I am thinking that this is the common consensus.

EDIT: BTW, your link doesn't work. I get the favicon but a blankpage.

[RichieBoy67]

Really? Works fine here... what browser are you using?

[DemOnstar]

I am using Firefox with the link you provided above.
Tried again this morning and still nothing.

[RichieBoy67]

Nobody else seems to be having an issue connecting. The only think I can think of is our security.. when you have time to try again let me know and I will disable some of it just to see.

--------------- Added 1402710193 at 1402710193 ---------------

Can you check again when you have a second?

[K4GAP]

I am using Firefox with the link you provided above.
Tried again this morning and still nothing.

You have more trouble than just your site. Link works fine with my firefox.

[RichieBoy67]

You have more trouble than just your site. Link works fine with my firefox.
I was getting nervours but traffic stats looked normal and no angry emails from anyone saying that can't connect..

Thanks for testing..

--------------- Added 1402711563 at 1402711563 ---------------

I am using Firefox with the link you provided above.
Tried again this morning and still nothing.


Try another browser, perhaps it is an app or something.

[DemOnstar]

Tried again using Firefox and all seems to be well now.

Perhaps you had a block on Cambodia?

[RichieBoy67]

Not that I'm aware of. I do block tor proxy and some certain hosts and some china ip's.

[RichieBoy67]

I'm not sure what happened but I was just going to respond to a post that is no longer here.

#The mod I was referring to is one of Lynne's so you know it is awesome right off

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=254333


In reply to some of what you mentioned: I have been doing this for a long time and these questions regarding the cms are really nothing new for me. I just have really never been able to discover the best path to take. I recently started pondering this again because we have been expanding a section in our site called "Pro List" and I wanted to figure out the best way to get this content indexed.

Right now I am just posting most of these Pro List articles directly into the forum and skipping the cms all together. I am using the cms more for bigger articles and announcements that I want displayed onto the main page.

I would really like to use the cms more for these articles but the fact is they are easily accessible and viewable when listed as sub forums and I have come to the conclusion that having these articles in both places is a little to cumbersome for the most part.

I have also not seen any evidence that promoting threads to articles causes any kind of an impact on seo but then again this is something very hard to know because an impact would happen slowly and not at once.

Thanks for the replies!

[tbworld]

I wrote this for the average reader. @RichieBoy67, I know you are in the business and most of this is obvious to you. Just skip the parts that do not apply. Note: we all know SEO covers many things, I am using the term loosly.

This is the definition I like for a CMS: A CMS should make it easy for a website to manage and distribute content.

All "content management systems" have different features, from enterprise management to context indexing. vBulletin's has a bit of everything plus widgets. Most CMS's have turned into webpage-generators which is why they are so inefficient.

@RichieBoy67, if you have found efficiency in posting your articles in your forums, then there is no need to change from that.

In my situation I had to handle article submission from throughout a company. A CMS makes more sense in this situation, especially when the articles have a shelf life of a week. Creating static pages would be a bit time consuming.

The thing I see out there is pages filled with nonsense content. Widgets on everything including the weather. Unless someone is running a travel site or something where weather impacts their users -- why is it there? Everyone who runs a computer can go find the weather. That is not content it is filler and fluff.

So if you have found a unique way to present your information. I say keep it. Pages with high content that are easy to read with good AD placement rank much higher then web pages filled with ADs. Who wants to read an article on a page filled with fluff. I try to make it easy for the web-search-engines to separate the content from the fluff, since we all know that is their current focus.

If you are having trouble with managing your articles quickly, then a CMS will help. None of it replaces a web-programmer, just use Drupal for a while. :) Drupal is at least a true CMS, WordPress is more like a webpage generator. vBulletin CMS has a bit of both but mainly being tightly coupled through the database is it's main feature, beyond submission and content sorting.

I for one, can see no point in having a forum page and then posting half of my forum data on a CMS content page. It is confusing to the user. It may look nice, but what are we trying to accomplish?

I would say if you have flow in your web design, then in general you are 'ahead of the game'. If you are questioning the interaction of your layout then I think you are on the right track. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I can at least offer you a free opinion.

--------------- Added 17 Jun 2014 at 01:12 ---------------


I have also not seen any evidence that promoting threads to articles causes any kind of an impact on SEO, but then again this is something very hard to know because an impact would happen slowly and not at once.

If you do not need to promote a thread then you never have to worry if there are SEO pitfalls. We do not overlap, because as you pointed out - it can get confusing, maybe to SEO, but definitely to the user.

Do you have multiple users submitting articles? What is the frequency of article submission?

--------------- Added 17 Jun 2014 at 01:30 ---------------

I wanted to add, that I deal with business, so my opinions are really only applicable to that segment. People portals are different animals and use different strategies. My daughters boards, for instance, certainly do not fit the criteria I gave above, although the "love-life" widget I wrote for them definitely helps their SEO. :)

[RichieBoy67]

I agree with your definition of a cms and I agree that Drupal is a true cms. I would also add Joomla and Wordpress to that category. They are all better in that aspect.

In the past we did have some issues with some mods and admins promoting threads to articles and many time they were not really articles and should not have been promoted. Now though it is mainly me that controls the cms and another admin every so often.

We have changed the structure of this site so that the cms page is no longer the first page people see when they visit. This really lessens the need but I am still not sure if this is something we will stick with. Before when people would visit the site they would see a huge title with a huge picture about an event or something else important and hopefully this would interest them enough to move on to the forum. Now though I think seeing the forums first is a better idea.

Ultimately I would like to keep the static articles separate and only in the cms. This would be difficult though with the amount of categories we have and most members who come to the site would not even notice the articles. This is the main reason for wanting some of them in both places.

As for promoting threads to articles I do it maybe once a week. We add new articles though just about daily but most of these are being added in the forum now and not in the cms at all.

Thanks very much for your advice and info. I would also love to see the widget you made for your daughter. It sounds interesting!