Mini Mods - HTTP Error Response Codes by BOP5 (Help reduce "soft 404" errors for improved SEO)

Brought to you by BirdOPrey5 / Qapla.com

This issue was brought to my attention by Sherrie at TAZ in this thread.

The issue is that when Google crawls a site and runs into the vBulletin No Permission message or other standard vBulletin error pages vBulletin gives the standard "200" HTTP response code which means everything is OK, even though there is no real content on these pages. Therefore Google considers these "soft errors" and they can damage overall SEO of your site if there are too many of them.

What this does is make vBulletin return standard HTTP "Error" responses- by default 403 (Not Authorized) for No Permission pages and 404 (Not Found) for general error messages. When Google sees these responses (as opposed to 200) it knows not to bother indexing the page and everyone is happy.

As of version 2.2 new options have been added to return custom response codes when the forum is closed or when the forum is busy. It will also send a retry header telling the crawler they can try again later. As of version 2.0 there is also a separate response code for search.php errors.

A limitation of this mod is it works best with PHP 5.4.0 or higher. As of version 2.0 If you are on an older version of PHP it may not work, but it should not cause any errors, so it is worth trying.

There are no instructions, once installed it is enabled by default. In Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> HTTP Error Responses by BOP5 you can enable/disable the mod and choose the response codes you want for the two different error types. You can use any standard HTTP response code available from this list at wikipedia.

The mod works fine on VB 3.x or 4.x including VB 3.8.8 (still in Beta) and VB 4.2.2.

To test that it is working use a free online status checker such as: http://httpstatus.io/
(Note the site will cache your result for a while so test with a unique URL each time.)

Before you install the mod any URL that will show a no-permission or other vBulletin error will show a status code of 200. After installing the same page will show a 403, 404, or other code that you have configured.

Added Boothby as a "co-author" as thanks for his contribution of code and ideas. :up:

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Please "Mark as Installed" if you use this.
Donations always appreciated. :up:
Nominate MOTM if you LOVE it!

[BirdOPrey5]

Oh, PHP performs better for sure than 5.2 or 5.3, however some mods may not work correctly with it.

You must upgrade to VB 3.8.8 if you have PHP 5.4.x. If you have a VB4 or VB5 license getting VB 3.8.8 is no big deal but if you don't that's going to be an expensive upgrade.

Bottom line- if it's possible and you have a VB4 or 5 license, sure go ahead- but be on the look out for the occasional mod that will malfunction.

But if you don't have the money or your host won't upgrade, don't worry about it too much.

[Gadget_Guy]

Update installed.

I will monitor and let you know if there are any issues.

What's the highest PHP version I can run with my 3.8.7 version?

FWIW.... my plan is to upgrade to 4.x or 5.x sometime this year.

Just need to wrap my head around doing it. I am fearing breaking the forums and something breaking in a bad way.



D.

[Zachery]

Originally Posted by Gadget_Guy

Update installed.

I will monitor and let you know if there are any issues.

What's the highest PHP version I can run with my 3.8.7 version?

FWIW.... my plan is to upgrade to 4.x or 5.x sometime this year.

Just need to wrap my head around doing it. I am fearing breaking the forums and something breaking in a bad way.



D.

388/422 will run on PHP 5.4.x without issues
5.1.1+ should run fine on php 5.5.
We're currently testing 5.6 stuff atm for the 5.1.x+ line.

[BirdOPrey5]

VB 3.8.7 tops out on PHP 5.3.x, don't use PHP 5.4.0 or higher. Make sure warnings / deprecated notices are turned off in PHP.

[Gadget_Guy]

Still experiencing issues.

Getting the following complaints from users:

The time to wait before retying the page fetch/search has been different every time the page doesnt load. 5, 6, 3, 10 seconds thus far, on separate occurrences.

When I click on "My Posts", I get an "Invalid user specified" message. The "My Threads" link works though. Very odd.

I get the no new threads message and failed CSS load so the the page is all messed up.

Still getting the error for my threads showing need to wait. Still not able to get videos, pictures and now URLs when linked through the [] brackets. Using chrome. Cleared caches, didn't change anything and still getting worse.

Just tried new posts link, now getting an error for it.

Looks like the time at the bottom of the page isn't updating properly, still thinks its 11am and 2pm.

Does it make a difference that I use SSL and a Content Distribution service?

D.

[BirdOPrey5]

Please uninstall the mod and see if the issues go away- I don't believe those issues could be related to this mod. SSL and a CDN should not matter.

[Gadget_Guy]

I disabled the mod... is this enough?

I will monitor the site for a couple days and if the issues go away I think we can narrow it down to this mod.

D.

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Gadget_Guy

I disabled the mod... is this enough?

I will monitor the site for a couple days and if the issues go away I think we can narrow it down to this mod.

D.

In theory yes, but in theory this mod wouldn't cause the issues you are having to begin with... I would just uninstall since it isn't difficult to re-install or setup.

[Gadget_Guy]

Thanks Joe,

I am completely stumped as to what could be causing this issue.

The only things I did at the same time as this mod were:

1) install new Google Analtyics code (which I have since removed)

2) Update TapaTalk (which I have disabled)

3) Installed his Mod (which I have disabled)

I asked the users to continue to monitor, but they are still seeing the issue.

so frustrating.

I'm sort of glad that it isn't this Mod, I hope I can put it back in place because it is really a valuable MOD for any forum to have.

D.

[Zachery]

Did you start using a load balancer?