search engine friendly hack

[Webb2002]

Hi there,

I posted at vbulletin.com and was advised to come here for a solution to a pre sales question. Here was my original question...

"I'm about to launch my webpromotion website using phpbb. Its a good forum, but it seems to have one major drawback. You can not make the forum pages search engine friendly :-/
By that I mean the url is flattened so that the "?" and "&" and other special characters are removed from the url. thisis inoportant as only one search engine can index them properly and that is google. Even google will not perform a deep crawl with them meaning only those pages with such query strings will be indexed IF the linking poge is NOT a dynamic url.

I don't want to go too deep as it gets a tad technical. I was advised on the phpforum to rewrie mods etc.

Anyway, i came across this excellent VB forum today...

http://www.visualbasicforum.com

The urls are flattened and the result of this is that no less than 1,380 postings are indexed in Google (!!). http://www.google.com/search?q=site:visualbasicforum.com+inurl:*&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N


FYI this domain has 184 pages indexed http://www.google.com/search?q=site:vbulletin.com+inurl:*&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N

[this forum btw has 19 http://www.google.com/search?q=site:vbulletin.org+inurl:*&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N ]

Most fo which are non dynamic although some dynamic pages are indexed. thes are most likely those linked from .html pages.

So the long and short of it is. if VB2/3 can EASILY do what visualbasicforum has done then I will deleting phpbb and you got yourself a customer.

BTW, the forum in question is http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/foren/index.php

It will be a German language forum theme web promotion.
"

I found a couple of hacks but the one I'm looking for is the one where the urls are flattened and has nothing to do with archiving. Sorry I forgot the name of the poster and exact name of the hack. I tried to ask a question but was denied access to the forum so hopefully poosting it here will help.

How can I tell if my server or I have mod_rewrite capability?

Also is this the same hack visualbasicforum.com is using?

Thanks for your reply in advance.

[NTLDR]

By default both vB2 and vB3 use the URLs with the ? & in them. However the way that vB3 does and vB2 with a hack will enable your site to be crawled is with an archive. To take a look at what I mean, visit the vB3 beta site (http://beta.vbulletin.com) and click Archive in the footer to see an example.

There has also been discussion on the boards of making all URL's in the form that you mentioned, however I don't think its working 100% yet.

Hope that helps you out :)

[Webb2002]

I've no found the thread again...

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18035&perpage=15&highlight=search%20engine%20friendly&display=&pagenumber=12

The thing is, if virtualbasicforum.com can get over 1000(!!) postings indexed by Google I'll take the hack with some warts :-)

Apparently it is possible to install both. Archive and SE friendly urls.

Alan

[DrkFusion]

I have actually done this, I have been able to remove the / and & and = from the url, I havn't tested to see if it can be searched, because I do not know or have the patients to check, but I have removed it. For 2.2.8.

EX: The url of this thread would look like
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php/44254/

-Arunan

[Webb2002]

Good news DrkFusion!

Actually VB should themselves recognize the unique selling proposition of being the only provider of a search engine friendly bulletin board and imo should go the extra mile to incorporate it or at least have an install option for it (possible only apache capable). It is no coincidence that the most popular web forums out there such as webmasterworld.com are specially designed to be search engine friendly.

Did you just use the hacks already posted or progrram your own thing?

Do tell :-)))

Alan

[DrkFusion]

It is my own thing, but I was fooling around with it, Tech from teckwizards.com was doing it for his site. I was just fooling around and it worked like a charm. But there are many template edits...and I mean MANY.

-Arunan

[Xenon]

well today i wrote something very easy to achive something like the Archiv they have on the vb3 Beta.

The advantage of such scripts is, that you have to edit just one template (header or footer) to get a link to them

[DrkFusion]

Umm, can I see an example?

This would be great addong.

-Arunan

[Xenon]

<a href="http://www.strategy-forum.de/searchengs/searchindex.php" target="_blank">http://www.strategy-forum.de/searchengs/searchindex.php</a>

as i said it is a really simple script, i don't know how it'll work on larger sites. It was just a little experiment by me

[DrkFusion]

Originally posted by Xenon
http://www.strategy-forum.de/searchengs/searchindex.php

as i said it is a really simple script, i don't know how it'll work on larger sites. It was just a little experiment by me
Hi, Would you be able to give me steps on how I can acheive this very same thing?

via PM or IM

Thanks
-Arunan

[Xenon]

Of course

i sent you a pm with the files i made

[Webb2002]

With some help I managed to get search engine friendly urls on my existing phpbb2. It involved .htaccess, renaming files without an extension and forcing php and a bunch of path to graphic changes (some like smilies and avatars still need to be done).

http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/foren/

vBulletin would most certainly have had my business if SE friendly urls came as standard. Maybe there is something to be learned there for Vbulletin :-/

Fine product though, and had I not already installed phpbb then I would have bought it anyway.

Good luck Drk. It will be worth the faffing about I'm sure. Getting found on SE's seems to very undervalued here, but I can tell you your registrations will rise a lot after a couple of months I'm sure.

Thanks all anywayAlan

[DrkFusion]

If you could send someone who is willing to modify it for vbulletin the htacces, I think they could do something, though Xenons Archive system is very impressive.

Thanks Xenon
-Arunan

[Erwin]

The searchindex.php file is offline, Xenon. Just letting you know.

[Xenon]

hmm, seems my host has had a short downtime, it works now

[DrkFusion]

Hey Filburt has released instructions on how to modify your board to get it to be read by search engines, you can find it at vbulletin.com

-Arunan