Major Additions - Zoints SEO

********Please do not use this modification unless you are VERY well educated on SEO and forum modification********

Zoints is a company that believes that forums are the killer application of the internet. We want to empower forum owners to take their community to the next level. Therefore, Zoints has been developing an extremely powerful vBulletin forum SEO and revenue enhancing solution for more than two years now. However, because we are focusing on our Forum Network and Thread Tagging System, we have decided to release this SEO solution to the vBulletin community under the lgpl license. Zoints SEO is now open source and NOT supported by us. We hope that the vBulletin dev community comes together to take this already powerful solution and make it even better. Empower yourselves

Zoints SEO can be discussed here or http://network.zoints.com (again, we will not be providing official support).


Known bugs

1. If a user disables cookies, infinite redirect loop.
2. index2, index3 pagination breaks some things. Standard p2, p3 works fine.


Zoints SEO is currently incompatible with: POSSIBLE FIX. PLEASE TRY THIS AND REPORT BACK. THANK YOU!
1. Incompatibility with vBA Gallery link.
2. Incompatibility with vBA Links
3. Improper linking from vBA CMPS Recent threads
4. Google Maps
[s]5. Non english characters[/s] - Character replacement is now available.


Without further ado:

[Cagonni]

Originally Posted by Cagonni

in godaddy there are some problems with mod_rewrite..

take a look at this..

Options SymlinksIfOwnerMatch
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
Rewritebase /
RewriteRule ^/?test\.html$ test.php [L]

this htaccess change test.php to test.html it works.But in zoints seo i should edit this lines like above..

RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(f|all)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ forumdisplay.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(t|p)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ showthread.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(index\.php|\.css) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(archive|sitemap)/(.*)$ $1/index.php/$2 [QSA,L]

but how?

fixed

[Zweeper]

hallo,

i have 2 problems and i hope that someone can help me. I'm using Vbulletin 3.5.4.

1.) in the online.php the links are not correctly rewritten.
when a user is reading a thread, there just is a "is reading a thread" message, not "is reading thread XXX".

2.) in my archive there is a error. (http://www.zweeper.de/forum/archive/)
i can see the site, but when i click on a link, i just come again and again on the archive startpage. when i turn Zoints SEO off, its all correct.

i deactivated the follow options:

Rewrite /archive/ to /sitemap/
Use Archive as Sitemap
Use Zoints Archive Navigation?

(when i activate them, the error is just the same)


my htaccess file looks like this:

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On  	 	 
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(f|all)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ forumdisplay.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(t|p)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ showthread.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(index\.php|\.css) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(archive|sitemap)/(.*)$ $1/index.php/$2 [QSA,L]

i hope someone can help me, greetings, zweeper.

[djbaxter]

in my archive there is a error. (http://www.zweeper.de/forum/archive/)
i can see the site, but when i click on a link, i just come again and again on the archive startpage. when i turn Zoints SEO off, its all correct

1. Are you on a server using CGI mode? If so, there seem to be some known problems with the archive.

2. Are you using mod_rewrite in Zoints SEO? If so, turn that feature off. You really do not need it with vBulletin 3.xx. The existing URLs are quite spider friendly.

[IrPr]

Just a simple question
does URL 301 redirection use query ?
i mean when i link to showthread.php?t=X and then Zoints redirects to xxx, the redirection stage will use any query or PHP resources?

sorry my bad english

[Capt. GannA]

I'm having problems moving/merging posts :/

You have not specified a valid URL for the thread that you want to merge. Please check that the URL includes a valid threadid, "t=xxx" or postid, "p=xxx" (where xxx is a number).

Help?

[djbaxter]

Are you using mod_rewrite?

[giovannicosta]

Would love to install this but sadly it is not supported.

[Capt. GannA]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

Are you using mod_rewrite?

Yes, I am.

[djbaxter]

My advice is to turn off URL rewriting.

1. vBulletin doesn't need it: all of the major search engines can spider and index the out-of-the-box vBulletin URLs without any modification at all

2. it won't help you with a vBulletin forum, notwithstanding popular clamorings to the contrary

3. it does add somewhat to server load - save that for features that actually matter and enhance your forum

[phlogiston]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

My advice is to turn off URL rewriting.

Personally speaking I find URL rewriting to be a great service to members and the broader internet population when faced with a link whether or not it improves search engine ranking and so I despair when folk say "it adds nothing" - it can add context and information to real people.

To explain: the majority of the time folk cut & paste links from the url address bar and often with no context.
for example: "CHECK THIS OUT! http://www.spoiltcat.com/showthread.php?t=2083 " doesn't have any hints of what to expect, whereas rewriten " http://www.spoiltcat.com/danni_minogue-t2083.html " has already given away that the link (probably!) has something to do with Kylie Minogue's sister, Danni...
For casual browsers I've improved the quality of traffic to my site simply by the link identifying what it's about.


If the occasional search engine bumps me from ranked 103 to 102 because of it well that's a nice bonus...