vB Easy Archive FINAL - Search Engine Spiderable Hack! Get your posts listed @ google

-- If you've installed this hack, please click here! -- If you want to upgrade to vBulletin 3, look here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=65703

[high]HOW GOOD DOES THIS HACK WORK??? >>> [/high]Over 29,000 pages spidered since January 1st!!!!!!! Visit http://www3.google.com/search?hl=en&...e+SkuZZy+Xenon to see all the pages this script has helped get spidered into google!

Sub-Forums have been added!

Final Version Released - February 10th

I added sub-forums in this final version, one of the most requested features to be added... but, sad to say... this will be the final version. I never got a chance to add some of the cool features I said, but I feel this archive has served it's purpose and hopefully will continue to do so for all the die hard users who stick with vb 2.2.9. I decided to make this the final version because vb3 is coming out soon and I think this archive is the best archive currently out. Sure, there are more flashy ones, but this one gets the job done and gets results. Hopefully this hack will live on for a while.
Edit by Xenon: Whenever there is a problem, i'll take a look at it, and perhaps add a feature or two

About this hack

This hack will help get all your threads listed in google and other search engines and get your threads easily spidered! It works by creating an archive and turning all your posts into .html format. It doesn't actually create the .html files though, but google thinks they are real! It uses mod_Rewrite. If you don't have mod_Rewrite, you can't use the scripts (sorry).

What does it do?

The purpose of this hack are to get your keywords from your forums listed in google and get people visiting them! Since these are all pure text and don't use tables or excess font tags, they are very friendly on bandwidth! This will display all your files in a nice text format that google will absolutely love! Visit the online demo below to see it in action!

Online Demos

To view a demo of this script, visit some of the "live" demos at the following sites:

http://www.destee.com/forums/archives
http://www.thrillnetwork.com/boards/archive/
http://www.truecountry.com/forums/history/
http://www.strategy-forum.de/easy_archive/index.php
http://www.pimprig.com/forums/archive/
http://www.jokersrewards.com/forum/history/
http://board.midibuddy.net/archive2/
http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/archive/
http://www.macfora.com/forums/archive/
http://www.rcgroups.com/archive/
http://www.codewebs.com/forums/archive/
http://www.lcdmod.com/forums/archive/
http://www.source-forums.org/vB/archive/
http://www.subduck.com/history/
http://www.thesistersthree.com/archive/
http://www.a51forums.com/archive/
http://www.yes-its-free.com/easyarchive/
http://www.wcgateway.com/forums/archive
http://www.toyotaimportsforum.co.uk/forum/archive/
http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/archive/
http://www.gamesites200.com/archive/
http://www.allthingsmoto.com/archive
http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/archive/
http://www.mysticwicks.com/archive/

Requirements

Apache
vBulletin 2.x
mod_mime installed
.htaccess
5 minutes of your time...


Known Problems/Confusion

Mod_mime - You will NEED mod_mime to run these scripts. Mod_mime is a free module which enables a directive called "ForceType". This allows you to use the .htaccess file included to force your files into php mode, which allows simple URL's, without .php in them. If you can see the front page of your archive, but get an error page when you click on any links then this is your problem. To fix it, you will need to install mod_mime, or ask your host to do it. It's a FREE module. For more information, visit http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_mime.html

Private forums - Private forums are NOT shown and they will NOT be spidered. Some people say the private forums show up, that is because you are logged in as the admin and the archive uses permissions. So anyone who has permission to view the private forums on your forums, will beable to view them on the archives also. But if you log out of your account OR log into an account that doesn't have access to them, then you won't beable to view them

Credits

Biggest credit goes to Xenon who originally coded the scripts. He is the man! Also thanks to everyone who tested it out for me and kept bugging me about releasing it (when I was too lazy to).

Agreement

By using these scripts & installing them, you agree to leave the small (virtually unnoticable) copyright text and links at the bottom of all pages. You also agree to leave jelsoft's copyright there as well. You can modify the scripts much as you want, but this portion must remain intact (links must stay) and visible. This is all we ask

Download Final

To install, just download the file below and open the "_readme.txt" file. All is explained there. Installation should only take a couple of minutes. If you have problems with this script, post them in this thread and I will try and get around to answering them.

[Smoothie]

Is it wise to leave links in your header/navbar in your archive page? The reason I ask is because I understand that google starts at the first link it sees and works down from there. If it crawls those links, will it stop? Does anyone know?

@SkuZZy-

Have we found a way to eleiminate that blank page we get when clicking the category link?

[SkuZZy]

Originally posted by Smoothie
Is it wise to leave links in your header/navbar in your archive page? The reason I ask is because I understand that google starts at the first link it sees and works down from there. If it crawls those links, will it stop? Does anyone know?

@SkuZZy-

Have we found a way to eleiminate that blank page we get when clicking the category link?

The blank page when clicking a category would probably be fixable, but I haven't bothered to fix it because it doesn't really matter whether or not it works. The bottom line is, this archive works. It's by all means not a "pretty archive" but it gets the job done and it gets pages spidered. Google doesn't start at the first link it sees and goes from there... google will spider all links. Regardless of what is at the top. Don't worry about the first link being a dead one, google really doesn't care.

SkuZZy

[SkuZZy]

Originally posted by Smoothie
Results from Macfora.com;
Results 1 - 10 of about 6,490. Search took 0.22 seconds

Holy mother. Congrats, that is a great amount of pages! You need to remember, google only allows so many pages to be indexed per cycle. So even though you have more thn 6000 threads, that's all google is gonna give you this time around The next month, another 6000, ect. This is to prevent googleboe from being overloaded, as spidering 50000 page sites isn't exactly easy to do. Please let me know if your hits increase. Right now google is still dancing, but watch in the next 3 days and see after that if your hits increase, they are bound to!

[Smoothie]

I noticed that past few days, google has been very active on my site.

And about the dead links in the navbar, yes, that was a big concern. Someone told me that if google tries to spide these first, there could be a problem, but judging from my results, I see that is not the case.

And yes, we get some forum members who actually go the archive to read it, thats why I asked about the dead category links.

BTW, here's my seach link;
Macfora.com

[SkuZZy]

muhahaha, smoothie. You are going to get tons of hits once google is done dancing. That is some spider you got! Congrats.

And now on a sad note, i've released the final version of this hack. I suggest everyone download it, because it's the final version... and it's stable. Hopefully this hack shall live on forever. Sorry to everyone for not getting around to adding cool new stuff, like the category thing mentioned above. Just no time lately and i've got to stop doing some stuff and with vb3 coming up, there realy is no need to continue this archive. All the die hards who stay with vb 2.2.9, this hack will be for you

SkuZZy

[Smoothie]

Is there any need to upgrade if the version we use works? What is new about this final version?

[SkuZZy]

Originally posted by Smoothie
Is there any need to upgrade if the version we use works? What is new about this final version?

It won't hurt to upgrade. Just upload all files EXCEPT config.php and nothing will change at all, atleast not that google will know of
. Nothing much changed, just cleaned up the code a bit and changed the copyright around. Everyone should upgrade though, just because... final versions rock

[Smoothie]

@SkuZZy-

many thanks for this hack!

[subduck]

When we upgrade to vbulletin3, will our forums history in google still redirect to the proper pages? or will they all be dead links?

[SkuZZy]

Originally posted by subduck
When we upgrade to vbulletin3, will our forums history in google still redirect to the proper pages? or will they all be dead links?

Good question. I'm assuming the old links will work. The URL hasn't changed in vb3... it still looks the same.