Major Additions - DC SEO vB URL Rewrite

[high]Removed until further notice[/high]

[DC Seo vB URL Rewrite]

Information

• [high]vBulletin Version:[/high] 3.5.x
• [high]Author:[/high] Dean Clatworthy
• [high]Copyright:[/high] You may use this modification at your own risk. I cannot and will not be held responsible for any damage you may cause to your forums during installation or thereafter. You may not distribute this modification in whole or parts and anyone found doing so faces risk of prosecution. All my modifications are released at vBulletin.org and anyone found releasing them elsewhere also faces risk of prosecution. You may not translate this modification without my prior permission.
• [high]Donations:[/high] I release my modifications for free. If you wish to donate please contact me and I will give you my details. All donations are graciously appreciated.

What does this modification do?
This modification will allow you to automatically have more search engine friendly URLs in your vBulletin. A forum which would normally display as forumdisplay?f=1 will now appear as f1-forumtitle.html and the same with threads. Having keywords in your URL can be of an advantage in search-engine ranking.

Requirements:

• You must have mod_rewrite apache module enabled on your server. Contact your host for more information.
• This will not work well for non-english boards as it strips most non-alpha numeric characters. E.g. ? would be stripped on french boards etc

Installation

1/

Please read the readme.txt file included in the zip for details on how to install this modification.


Please Click Install!
If you installed this modifcation please click the install button. It'll help you keep up to date with future releases and important bugfixes, security updates.

[Dean C]

<font size="5">Updated to v1.1:</font>

All bugs should be fixed except the quick style chooser. I don't know how I'm going to approach that one exactly yet but at the moment unless I write it into the rewrite rules to accept an optional styleid parameter.

[kall]

Originally Posted by Dean C

Updated to v1.1:

All bugs should be fixed except the quick style chooser. I don't know how I'm going to approach that one exactly yet but at the moment unless I write it into the rewrite rules to accept an optional styleid parameter.

Sweet...it's working now.

Any chance you could figure out how to rewrite the latest post link? Duplicate content is apparently an issue with some engines.

I don't know if you have read this seo vbulletin hack but it has some pretty excellent tips for SEOing vB...some of which were incorporated into 3.5.

*edit* hahaha..

PHP Code:

http://www.nzboards.com/forums/f41-img-srcimagesforumhome41gif-altthe-testing-zone-border0-vspace2-px-hspace5px-width40-height39-alignleft.html 


[Dean C]

Why would you want to rewrite the latest post link? It'll change every single time a bot spiders it. Also it'd almost be a duplicate content as you point out which is a bad thing.

[kall]

Originally Posted by Dean C

Why would you want to rewrite the latest post link? It'll change every single time a bot spiders it. Also it'd almost be a duplicate content as you point out which is a bad thing.

Well, if I click on it from forumdisplay.php, it is

PHP Code:

http://www.nzboards.com/forums/t3042-i-hate-the-cold.html 


but from forumhome it is

PHP Code:

http://www.nzboards.com/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=3042 


... if they were the same link, that would cut down on the duplicate content.

[vBSEO]

Originally Posted by Dean C

All bugs should be fixed except the quick style chooser. I don't know how I'm going to approach that one exactly yet but at the moment unless I write it into the rewrite rules to accept an optional styleid parameter.

Hi Dean,

I?m working on a mod_rewrite hack as well. Here is some code you can use to handle the ?quick style chooser? by adding ?&%{QUERY_STRING}? to .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)-([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)\.html$
forumdisplay.php?f=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)(((-p)([0-9]+))?)([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)\.html$ showthread.php?t=$1&page=$5&pp=10&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

This will also add any additional parameters to the URL, and will likely help to avoid other potential issues that might occur.

Here you can find out more info about my hack, vBSEO:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=91362

Maybe we can do some brainstorming on potential improvements on the SEO aspects :up:

Juan

[coffeefix]

This plug in screwed up my forum, royally. Uninstalling.

[Dean C]

Originally Posted by coffeefix

This plug in screwed up my forum, royally. Uninstalling.

Well it is clearly marked as beta, could you explain exactly what it screwed up please ?

[coffeefix]

Quite a few of my forums became unaccessible, when clicking on a forum, you would get taken to a 404 page not found error page. Once the plug-in was turned off they became accessible again.

[Dean C]

Well it is most likely that you do not have mod_rewrite enabled. Contact your host to get it enabled and reinstall the plugin again and it should work

[TrentTech]

Version 1.1 works! Thanks Dean!