Google sitemap for the vB Archives. Redirect human and robots.

Release V1.2 (9 Nov 2005)
* Higher sitemap priority rate is given to threads with new posts. So Google can index fresh threads first.

* Not recommending the original optional STEP 3 hack. To avoid potential Google penalty, my advice is to remove the STEP 3 hack.

Release V1.1a (12 Oct 2005)

* Bug fix only

Release V1.1 (9 Oct 2005)

* Can handle very large forums with more than 50,000 URLs per forum
URLs will be spanned through multiple files for each large forum.

* Created a function to detect search engine crawlers. The vB built-in
search engine detector can only identify about 3 or 4 search engines.
My function will detect over 20 search engine crawlers.

* Support forums hosted by web servers that do not support 'fix_pathinfo'
ie. instead of the usual 'archive/index.php/f-10.html' link. These
forums have a link as 'archive/index.php?f-10.html'.

* Alert about wrong directory permissions to help newbies.

* Automatically write index file to archive directory if the php
script can not write into the base vB directory.

* Bug fixes.


Objectives
==============

• Create Google sitemap files and sitemap index file for vB archives, submit to Google by the Scheduled Tasks.
• To have the vB Archive used as a mirror to the actual threads.
• Google loves the nature of the archive pages, as they are static and do not contain repeated contents.
• Google gauge pages heavily based on external links. We need to redirect these external thread links to the archive pages.
• We often see vbulletin archive in the Google search results, but the users are taken to the archive page instead of the actual threads. We need to automatically redirect visitors to the actual threads instead of the archive. Otherwise the visitor either need to reclick for the Full Version or read the dull archive contents.

Q and A
==============
Q. Would the sitemap contain the links for hidden forums?
A. No, the forum permission was consulted while generating the sitemap files.

Q. How often are the sitemap files generated?
A. You decide and set in the Scheduled Tasks. The script can not be called by external user by default to prevent boring people killing your server.

Q. Is the sitemap file compressed.
A. Yes, the multiple sitemap files are gunziped according to Google sitemap standard to save bandwidth. Sitemap index file is not compressed, it is submitted as a normal xml file.

Q. Would the sitemaps include links for the normal threads? eg. showthread.php?t=1234...
A. No, it is unlikely Google will index your entire site if you feed it with all the combination of showthread links. It is better to let Google going through the more static archives. You will have a better chance for sure to have more thread contents indexed by Google this way.

Q. Why don't you go crazy about rewrite rules and do things like including thread title as the url.
A. I won't deny having keywords in the url is a good SEO strategy, but Google also does not like "Over Search Engine Optimized" web sites. Google has recently penalized a huge number of such sites. Sending them from page rank of 5, 6 to 0.

Q. Does sitemap really help?
A. Definitely, Google has done over 60,000 pages since I submitted my sitemaps a few days ago. Yahoo bots were visiting more pages than Google before the sitemap. I expect the total Google visits for this month will be exceeding Yahoo in the next one or two days.

What is involved?
==================
I have divided this hack into two steps. The first step involves unloading a php file. This enables the sitemap to be generated and submitted to Google.

The second step involves installing a Plugin using AdminCP. This sends all robots to the archive pages, preventing them viewing the actual threads.

For example, Google/Other Crawlers follows an external link to visit:
http://forums.mysite/showthread.php?t=1234&page=2

It will be told this page is permanently relocated to:
http://forums.mysite/archive/index.php/t-1234-p-2

This way you don't lose page rank gain from external links.

Install
=========
To install, follow the readme file.
To let me know you have installed this and let me send update information to you. Please click INSTALL .

Strategy
=========

It is unlikely Google/other Search Engine will index your entire site, especially due to the dynamic nature of the vbulletin forums. An archive sitemap will let Google concentrate on the real contents of your forums -- the threads. If Google needs to go through the endless member profile pages. It will get sick of it and just become tired.(sorry, perhaps robots can not become tired). What we can do is disallowing the crawling of unneccessary pages. My robots.txt contains:

#ALL BOTS
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admincp/
Disallow: /ajax.php
Disallow: /attachments/
Disallow: /clientscript/
Disallow: /cpstyles/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /install/
Disallow: /modcp/
Disallow: /subscriptions/
Disallow: /customavatars/
Disallow: /customprofilepics/
Disallow: /announcement.php
Disallow: /attachment.php
Disallow: /calendar.php
Disallow: /cron.php
Disallow: /editpost.php
Disallow: /external.php
Disallow: /faq.php
Disallow: /frm_attach
Disallow: /image.php
#Disallow: /index.php
Disallow: /inlinemod.php
Disallow: /joinrequests.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /member.php?
Disallow: /memberlist.php
Disallow: /misc.php
Disallow: /moderator.php
Disallow: /newattachment.php
Disallow: /newreply.php
Disallow: /newthread.php
Disallow: /online.php
Disallow: /payment_gateway.php
Disallow: /payments.php
Disallow: /poll.php
Disallow: /postings.php
Disallow: /printthread.php
Disallow: /private.php
Disallow: /profile.php
Disallow: /register.php
Disallow: /report.php
Disallow: /reputation.php
Disallow: /search.php
Disallow: /sendmessage.php
Disallow: /showgroups.php
Disallow: /showpost.php
Disallow: /subscription.php
Disallow: /usercp.php
Disallow: /threadrate.php
Disallow: /usercp.php
Disallow: /usernote.php

You perhaps have noticed I included index.php in there. Apparently Google regards http://forums.mysite/index.html as same as http://forums.mysite/
...but http://forums.mysite/index.php as a different file. The default vB templates include index.php as the internal link. That will spread your page rank on your home page! So it is better off not letting Google see this file.

If you have rewrite installed. Perhaps you could add to the .htaccess file:

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

(if your forums are under http://site/forums/. Try: RewriteRule ^forums/index.php$ forums/ [R=301,L])

That will redirect /index.php to /, but only if no query_string is presented. ie. /index.php?do=mymod will not be redirected.

[Brandon Sheley]

the public_html folder ?

[Brandon Sheley]

Originally Posted by Loco Macheen

the public_html folder ?

so.....
do a assume that this is correct ? to chmod the forum directory ?
thx for the quick help

[turkforum]

Thank you very much lierduh, it is really great vB3.5 Extensions..
I will install it as soon as i can but i will have a question for you..

To keep my opened treads in order,I had to have so many subforums on my board, over then 1 million post..there is even no treads opened under main forums but all treads have placed in subforums of the forums..Even though my archive is pr 4 (main forum pr5), google just doesn't get in to those subforums and not indexing my treads..Pls, correct me if i am wrong..With this extension, can we solve this problem?

I use Vb 3.5 rc2
Linux rhel 4.0
my base directory is home/account/Public_html/
And archive at the public_html/archive/

Best regards..

[lierduh]

Yes, you will definity have more pages indexed by Google by using sitemaps.

With my experience, if a web site's structure is too complicated, Google will be hesitated to go deeper. Sitemaps files basically advice Google that the URLs you want Google to crawl. Despite Google claims their crawlers do not base their crawling habbit entirely on sitemaps. In reality, they use sitemaps extensively. They crawl the URLs with higher "priority" first. My sitemaps have the forum list set to higher priority only after the home archive page, followed the thread pages.

My script will only write one small sitemap index file to the base vBulletin directory (g_sitemap.xml), all the sitemaps files are written to 'archive' directory. (sitemap_11.gz, sitemaps_15.gz...)

Originally Posted by turkforum

Thank you very much lierduh, it is really great vB3.5 Extensions..
I will install it as soon as i can but i will have a question for you..

To keep my opened treads in order,I had to have so many subforums on my board, over then 1 million post..there is even no treads opened under main forums but all treads have placed in subforums of the forums..Even though my archive is pr 4 (main forum pr5), google just doesn't get in to those subforums and not indexing my treads..Pls, correct me if i am wrong..With this extension, can we solve this problem?

I use Vb 3.5 rc2
Linux rhel 4.0
my base directory is home/account/Public_html/
And archive at the public_html/archive/

On my base directory I see files like
core.1000 sizes are around 22.000KB
I got more than maybe 30 of these
But Under Archive i can not see a map file
Still looking at the issue on my side

My apache runs as nobody and both directorys have 777 for nobody

Best regards..

[turkforum]

When I check your arcive page i see that the threads are shown as

/archive/index.php/f-10.html

But mine is still

archive/index.php?f-372.html

How can i change the Questionmark with the /

Where did i make a mistake please advice

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by turkforum

When I check your arcive page i see that the threads are shown as

/archive/index.php/f-10.html

But mine is still

archive/index.php?f-372.html

How can i change the Questionmark with the /

Where did i make a mistake please advice

I am glad you mention this. You need to turn on Apache's AcceptPathInfo.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod...acceptpathinfo

I will add this to the FAQ.

[turkforum]

Originally Posted by lierduh

I am glad you mention this. You need to turn on Apache's AcceptPathInfo.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod...acceptpathinfo

I will add this to the FAQ.

Will not having this feature effect the google indexing and caching results?
iF yes you mentioned it was for apache 2.0
Is there any other way to make this happen?

thnx

[Yorixz]

This mod looked very interesting, install went fine but now when I try to run it I get this errors:

Warning: fopen(/home/ftpusers/otfans/html/forums/g_sitemap.xml) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /archive/forums_sitemap.php on line 245

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /archive/forums_sitemap.php on line 247

Fatal error: Call to a member function query() on a non-object in /home/ftpusers/otfans/html/forums/archive/forums_sitemap.php on line 98

Fatal error: Call to a member function unlock_tables() on a non-object in /home/ftpusers/otfans/html/forums/includes/functions.php on line 4240

What am I doing wrong? I'll be very glad to hear it

[David_R]

Hi,
does this hack supports vb 3.x versions ?
does this hack has a feature to capture
title
Keywords
Description as well ?

thanks

[Yorixz]

Originally Posted by David_R

Hi,
does this hack supports vb 3.x versions ?
does this hack has a feature to capture
title
Keywords
Description as well ?

thanks

It doesn't support vB 3.x, that's why it's in the vB 3.5 category