i can't seem to get the files to be created :(

from the instructions, which where just about to much info for me..
i upload the forums_sitemap.php to arcives then chmom the arcives folder 775,
then make the sceduled task, run it, and the files should be made..
what part am i missing ? thankyou..

at rc3 now.

I'm also still having that errors, weird =/ lierduh, could it be that you've tested it with PHP4 rather than PHP5?

I do not have php5 to test.

Instead of calling the script directly, have you tried using the Schedule Task's "Run Now" button?

thank you very much! I just started trying to do this my self but found this :D yay!

Yes, that results into for like thousand times.

Weird thing is that I'm 100% sure that I chmodded everything correctly. (It's on a debian host, if that is relevant)

That means the script can't write to archive directory. What is the persmission for this directory?

Right now it's 0777 and it's working, I thought I already changed it some days ago, it was 0775 (which should be enough as far as I know)

Thanks for your support ;)

OK I have this installed and it seems to be working as described. When viewing who's online I can see the search engines looking at threads with url's similar to the following.

/archive/index.php/t-6044.html

When clicked by a human user they are redirected to

/showthread.php?t=6044

So I can only assume this works since all the spiders on the board are seeing the archived version, and when users click they are taken to the full version.

I do have a couple of questions however, since I am not too familiar with Google Sitemaps. Does the script automatically upload the sitemap to Google without any further action aside from making the Scheduled Task? I have made the task in the manager and run it (every day at 1AM), and it has created the files ( [xml] in forum root and specific [gz] forums in archive folder).

[upon further thinking, would I be correct in saying I need to let google know about the xml file in the root of the site?]

What is the affect on other search engines? I see yahoo, msn, ask, and others viewing similar archives, so I assume the affect is similar to what is happening with google, but they are not getting a map.

Last question, does this basically mean that other SEO hacks are not required, since the spiders will never see the rewritten urls anyhow?

Allot of assumptions up there. :ermm:

Oh and one last thing, I do use mod rewrite on my server for many sites, and have had no issues, but the command you say to enter to resolve the index.php issue seems to bog the server, making any urls that point directly to it, as in /index.php, not load. I suppose this could be a conflict within my htaccess file, but not too certain where to start looking. (however, I did try it with only the codes you provided (and RewriteEngine on) and have the same problem.

Thanks for your time and the hack.

Each time the script is run.

1) It re-generates all the sitemaps. Makes sense because you have more threads/posts now.

2) It notifies Google about new sitemaps being available. You will notice Google fetches these files soon afterwards.

If you have the scheduled task logged. The end of the log is the response sent by Google. It should say:

======================
Sitemap Notification Received

Your Sitemap has been successfully added to our list of Sitemaps to crawl. If this is the first time you are notifying Google about this Sitemap, please add it via http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps so you can track its status. Please note that we do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.
======================

One thing to remember is under your Google sitemap account. The 'last submitted' does not reflect the auto ping/submit. It only logs the manual submit you do by push the button at Google sitemap account.

Other search engine do not accept sitemaps as far as I know, at least not using Google's sitemap format. The redirects however works for all the major search engine which I believe benefits the indexing.

I do not recommend using SEO at least for existing sites. The chances are Google has already indexed part of your forums using links like /showthread.php?t=12345. Now if you rewrite all the URLs, Google will have two copies of the same contents for that thread. (one with the traditional URL, one from your new rewrite URL). This will lead Google panalizing your site ranking. Some smarter SEO scheme redirect your old URL to the new one does not suffer this, but it becomes a very complicated add-on. It may break every time a mojor vB version is released. I elect not to use such scheme. For the record, I used URL rewrite SEO back in vB2 era. In my .htaccess, I still need to redirect my old rewritten vB2 URLs in fear of Google penalizing my site. Basically the vB archive is very static, it was designed for SEO in the first place anyway. Think about how many clickable links a normal showthread brings to you, it becomes a mess for search engines no matter how smart your SEO is.

For index.php redirect, my working version is:

RewriteEngine on

#...

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ / [R=301,L]

If it does not work for you, I would check the http logs. Failing that, log your rewrite! (you need to do this in your http.conf, consult apache manual for log level etc.:))

Thanks for the reply, that clears up alot... I had to verify site ownership via google, the logs for the cron showed exactly that.

One thing I notice however, while looking now, is that the google spider is viewing a few regular threads, while the google adsense spider is viewing the archive, also viewing the archive is msnbot yahoslurp and askjeeves.

Wonder why google is seeing a regular thread now.

Going to look into the htaccess in a bit.