vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator for vBulletin 3.6.x, 3.5.x & 3.0.x

vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator - vBulletin 3.5.x
Download vB 3.8.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.7.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.6.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.0.x Compatible Version Here

Note: Version 2.5 replaces all previous versions of the vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator, and now includes support for all the new URL types in vBulletin 3.8.x.

Overview
============================

Providing Google, Yahoo, Ask sitemaps is an essential step towards improving your forums.

The "vBSEO Google Sitemaps" plugin provides a solution that allows your forum to be indexed by the Google (and also Yahoo and Ask) search engines faster, more completely, more effectively, and with less bandwidth consumption.

The ultimate goal is to help you achieve more web traffic for your forum.

Originally Posted by Google's Description of GSM

https://services.google.com/inquiry/publishertools?hl=en_US
Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your site?s representation in the Google index. It's a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google. You get a smarter crawl because you can provide Google with specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently it changes.

Note: This plugin is fully compliant with vBSEO 3.x version. The current version is vBSEO 3.2. However, if you are running vBSEO, please upgrade to vBSEO 3.2 or greater before installing.

Compatibility
============================

Fully compatible with:

• vBulletin 3.0.x, 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x and 3.8.x
• vBulletin Blogs 1.0.x and 2.0.x *Optional
• vBSEO 2.x, 3.x *Optional

What does it do?

============================

• Auto-generates a Google XML sitemap for all of your specified forum URL types (including vBulletin Blog URLs).
• Auto-generates a Yahoo text sitemap for all of your specified forum URL types.
• Auto-notifies Google when a new sitemap is generated.
• Automatically sends you a summary of the sitemap generation via email each time it is created.
• Includes only publicly accessible forums and threads.
• Allows Google/Yahoo to find all of your forum URLs without having to spider the forum to find the links.
• Allows Google/Yahoo to find your forum URLs without having to account for query string and/or session ID information.
• Allows Google to give precedence to crawling your higher priority forum pages.
• Allows Google to give precedence to crawling your forum pages that change more frequently.
• Allows you to conserve bandwidth by more efficiently facilitating the crawling processes for GoogleBot and Yahoo Slurp.
• Is 100% compatible with the static CRUs (Content Relevant URLs) used by vBSEO-enabled forums.

How does it work?
============================

Whenever it is scheduled or invoked via the URL, this plugin will generate both the Google XML formatted and the Yahoo text formatted sitemaps. If you selected "Yes" to the Google auto-notification setting, Google will be notified each time the sitemap is generated. The Yahoo sitemap must be manually submitted to http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request/.

• Google Sitemap files are gzipped
• Forum and thread pages are listed with pagination (i.e. all pages for each forums/thread are included in the sitemap)
• Maximum Priority is set for Sticky threads.
• Optimization for sitemap generation on large forums.

Automated Reporting Tool
============================

The vBSEO Sitemap includes a report tool, allowing you to track your progress. To access your reports enter the following URL:

http://www.example.com/forums/vbseo_sitemap/

NOTE: Replace "http://www.example.com/forums/" with the full URL to your vB forum root.


You will be required to login by providing your "Sitemap Interface Access Password" from your vBSEO Sitemap settings in:

• vBulletin Admin CP (for 3.5.x/3.6.x/3.7.x/3.8.x users) OR
• vbseo_sitemap.php configuration file (for 3.0.x users) located in the vbseo_sitemap directory in your forum root.

Once you successfully login, you will be provided with a list of 'Useful Links'. Here are the 4 main links:

Show Reports List
The 'Show Reports List' link will display a report of each time your vBSEO Sitemap generator executed, including the (1) date, (2) run time, (3) total URLs included, and (4) and change in # of URLs included from the last generation.

Each vBSEO Sitemap generation record will include a (1) "View details" and (2) "Remove record" link. The "View Details" link shows more detailed information about the sitemap generated. The "Remove record" will permanently delete the record from your reports.

Show Sitemap Downloads Log
The 'Show Sitemap Downloads Log' link will display a report of each time your vBSEO Sitemap was downloaded by either a search engine (GoogleBot or Yahoo) or by another user agent (i.e. Web browser, etc.).

The report includes the (1) date, (2) name of sitemap file downloaded, (3) Bot, (4) IP address of the downloader, and the (5) User-agent.

Each vBSEO Sitemap download record will include a "Remove record" link which will permanently delete the record from your reports.

Run Sitemap Generator
The 'Run Sitemap Generator' link will automatically regenerate your Google and Yahoo sitemaps.

Your Forums Homepage
The 'Your Forums Homepage' link is a quick link back to your forum homepage.

Additional Links
Additional links to various other related SEO resources are also included.


Click "Install"
============================

Please click "Install" to show your support for this script.


Installation & Configuration for vB 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x and 3.8.x as a Plugin
============================

Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.


Google Webmaster Accounts
============================

It is NOT required for you to have a Google Webmaster account to run the vBulletin Google Sitemaps plugin. If you decide to setup an account for testing purposes you can do so here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?sourceid=gsm&subid=us-et-about2


Copyright & Licensing

============================

• vBSEO Google Sitemaps plugin is copyright protected by Crawlability Inc.
• You are free to download and install this plugin on any vBulletin forum for which you hold a valid vB license.
• Unauthorized distribution of any code and/or documentation, whole or in part, included here is strictly prohibited.
• In addition, the following copyright notice must be maintained.

vBSEO(TM) ? 2005-2009 Crawlability, Inc.


Revision History
============================

02/22/2009 - Version 2.5 Released

NEW FEATURE: Blog tags URLs are included.
NEW FEATURE: Social Group Discussion URLs are included.
NEW FEATURE: Smart Priority applied for the following URL types

1. Show Post
2. Member Profiles
3. Forum Display
4. Poll Results
5. Blog Entries
6. Member Profile Albums
7. Social Groups
8. Social Groups Discussions
9. Social Group Pictures
10. Tags
11. Blog Tags

UPDATE: Compatible with vBulletin 3.8.x. Includes the following updated settings:

1. Priority Range - Show Post
2. Priority Range - Member Profiles
3. Priority Range - Forum Display
4. Priority Range - Poll Results
5. Priority Range - Show Thread
6. Priority Range - Blog Entries
7. Priority Range - Member Profile Albums
8. Priority Range - Social Groups
9. Priority Range - Social Group Pictures
10. Priority Range - Tags

Fix: Social Group Discussion database error is fixed.

Upgrade Instructions
============================

(1) Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.

(2) For versions of vBulletin 3.6.x only: Open "Schedule Manager" in the vBulletin Admin Control Panel (admincp); Remove existing scheduled task for Sitemap Generator if you have one.
Note: The new task will be automatically setup when you import the XML product file.

Other vBSEO Plugins

============================

• vBSEO - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization
  
• vBSEO Conditional Signatures for vBulletin

vBSEO Affiliate Program
============================

We welcome you to join the vBSEO Affiliate Program.

[kall]

Originally Posted by defcon_420

My site uses Cpanel and Cpanel detects bots and wont log them as visitors.

Is that a feature of cPanel? A new version or something?

I ask because my host provides cPanel. My site logs all visits by anything that visits it, bots or not.

It also has nice PR, thanks in part to my use of this hack.

[DefenceTalk]

Originally Posted by iojam

DefenceTalk,

sitemap protocol has no commands to remove pages from the index, so it can't force the number of indexed pages to drop.
There are, however, other factors (not related to sitemap) that may cause this (these changes may be related to a google update).
You can also add your sitemap files URLs to the google webmaster account to check if there is a parse error.

We were able to fix this problem by DISABLING the vBSEO Installed? in the sitemap generator vbOptions. The forum indexes went from 500 to 11,000+ over night.

Thanks for the hack.

[turkerm]

So, will I still need to use "Clean URLs" (I mean thread1253.htm) for the spiders?

Or is it pretty enough to be crawled properly and seen in the search engines as if I were using Clean urls?

[DementedMindz]

Originally Posted by turkerm

So, will I still need to use "Clean URLs" (I mean thread1253.htm) for the spiders?

Or is it pretty enough to be crawled properly and seen in the search engines as if I were using Clean urls?

nah the bots crawl your site no matter what... read up on SEO optimization even do a search on google,msn,yahoo....vbulletin aint seo'ed and they crawl and spider this fine... this is googles stats on vbulletin Results 1 - 10 of about 463,000 from vbulletin.org

[turkerm]

Originally Posted by DementedMindz

nah the bots crawl your site no matter what... read up on SEO optimization even do a search on google,msn,yahoo....vbulletin aint seo'ed and they crawl and spider this fine... this is googles stats on vbulletin Results 1 - 10 of about 463,000 from vbulletin.org

Yes, I know that bots crawl anyway. Yet I wonder, if there are any difference between thread123.html style pages and showthread.php?t=123 style pages with respect to the order that Google shows when someone do a search.

Currently I use thread123.html style and Google has indexed about 43000 pages and every month I get 60.000 unique visitors. 300.000 pages viewed in total. I think this is the advantage thread123.html style URL's.

Yet, now I know that this Sitemap generator is not compatible with my *.html urls. So I'm trying to find out which one is better for me.

- thread123.html style without map generator

or

- showthread.php?t=123 style with this map generator


Which one?

[DementedMindz]

personally i would say - showthread.php?t=123 style with this map generator... i mean seo urls are nice but aint always needed... plus i feel mod_rewrite slows sites and servers down...

[turkerm]

Thanks, any other ideas?

[DementedMindz]

just read up on SEO optimization... thats what i been doing.. its just a matter of how far you want to go with the SEO optimizations

[Marv]

I just upgraded 1.6 to 1.61 and received this error:

PHP Code:

[SECTION START] showthread [5,579.1Kb mem used] [1s (+0)]
[create sitemap file] filename: sitemap_1.xml, number of urls: 25000 [5,477.2Kb mem used] [68s (+67)]
[create sitemap in text format] part #2 [5,477.1Kb mem used] [68s (+0)]
[create sitemap file] filename: sitemap_2.xml, number of urls: 25000 [5,477.2Kb mem used] [106s (+38)]
[create sitemap in text format] part #3 [5,477.1Kb mem used] [106s (+0)]
[archive homepage] [5,532.9Kb mem used] [141s (+35)]
[SECTION START] forumdisplay archived [5,533.0Kb mem used] [141s (+0)]
[SECTION START] member [5,585.6Kb mem used] [142s (+1)]
[addon module] vbseo_sm_vba.php [5,479.1Kb mem used] [157s (+15)]

Warnung: in_array(): Wrong datatype for second argument in /includes/functions_vbseo.php (line 1685)
[create sitemap file] filename: sitemap_3.xml, number of urls: 20029 [5,516.4Kb mem used] [157s (+0)]
[create sitemap in text format] part #4 [5,516.4Kb mem used] [157s (+0)]
[create sitemap index] filename: sitemap_index.xml.gz, number of sitemaps: 3 [5,517.0Kb mem used] [157s (+0)] 


Anyone an idea ?

[iojam]

jaybolt,
this is just a mistyping, please ignore this.


DefenceTalk,

great!


turkerm,
I'd suggest you to include *rewritten* URLs in sitemap, i.e., the URLs that normal visitors see at your forums.


Marv,

this warning message doesn't affect the sitemap generation and will be fixed with next version. You can ignore it for now.