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
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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
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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?
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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

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

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

We welcome you to join the vBSEO Affiliate Program.

[Yellow Slider]

i'm using this script for alot of time, but there is an error with the google bots!
im getting an error in the https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitemaps?
i'm sending somthing like 150-160 sitemaps si it's very importent to me, all of the files got an error - Unsupported file format
Your Sitemap does not appear to be in a supported format. Please ensure it meets our Sitemap guidelines and resubmit.

what should i do? it's the first time i'm getting this kind of error..
what to do? google bots won't get sitemap_81.xml.gz cous it's compressed in GZ , can you help me? :\
i think you need to change the script..

i found out the problem!
i've tried to enter one of my site maps and i got an error
Warning: fopen(/home/atraf/domains/atraf-f.net/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/data/downloads.dat) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/atraf/domains/atraf-f.net/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php on line 40

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/atraf/domains/atraf-f.net/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php on line 41

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/atraf/domains/atraf-f.net/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php on line 42

what is it? what to do?
also there was alot of gibrish content..
thanks!

[Alfa1]

Is there an ETA on MSN site maps that you know off?

[T_Richardson]

I included some links that are not in my forums folder in the "extra-urls.txt" and I get errors from google sitemaps:

URL not allowed

Google has detected some URLs that appear to be at a higher level or different domain than the Sitemap file location. If you receive this error, try moving your Sitemap file to a higher location in your site and submitting again. For instance, if your Sitemap is listed under http://www.example.com/mysite/sitemap.xml, the following URLs are not valid for that sitemap

* http://www.example.com/ - it's at a higher level than the Sitemap
* http://www.example.com/yoursite/ - it's in a directory parallel to the Sitemap

My sitemap is located in the forums directory. When I include links that are in my root (vBadvanced), google shows that error.

Is there any way to remedy this?

[Pottsy]

Just to pass on some .htaccess wisdom (ie I managed to fix this for myself after a bit of reading)...

My forums are in www.mydomain/forum

My root htaccess contains:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mydomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [QSA,L,R=301]

This stops any Google duplicate content penalties by redirecting http://mydomain.com or 123.45.67.89/~user/forum type addresses to http://www.mydomain.com.

Fine.

Then I put this mods htaccess into my forum directory, and a month or 2 later Google has picked up and is indexing pages like:

123.45.67.89/~username/forum/showthread.php?p=56800

Yikes! Duplicate content penalty.

To fix this, your htaccess file in your forum directory should look like:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mydomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.mydomain.com/forum/$1 [QSA,L,R=301]

RewriteRule ^(sitemap.*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]

HTH

[iojam]

Yellow Slider,

you should set permissions for data/downloads.dat file to 0666.

T_Richardson,

all links added in extra-urls.txt file must be locate in forums folder or below. Otherwise you should move your sitemaps to domain root (instead of forums root).

[T_Richardson]

It saves it in my forums directory, how can I move it so it updates automatically in my root? Do I have to reinstall vBSEO Sitemap Generator to have it in my root?

[Pottsy]

Originally Posted by iojam

Yellow Slider,

you should set permissions for data/downloads.dat file to 0666.

I had a variation of this problem, as the forum grew the script made new files in the format:
sitemap_4.xml.gz
sitemap_5.xml.gz
sitemap_6.xml.gz

but as it generated new ones, the permissions were incorrect and errors appeared. The only solution I came up with was to make a whole load of dummy 0 byte files in the format:

sitemap_4.xml.gz
sitemap_5.xml.gz
sitemap_6.xml.gz
sitemap_7.xml.gz
sitemap_8.xml.gz
sitemap_9.xml.gz

and set them to 666, so in the future when the script started to generate and overwrite those files the permissions were correct and the errors didn't occur.

[cobaltcoupe]

Installed! This is pretty cool. How long does it usually take effect?

[Ba$im]

thx

but can u tel me how i can translate sitmap to my language?

[NightShado]

Thanx for realese it for our