Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator

vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator - vBulletin 3.6.x
Download vB 3.8.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.7.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.5.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"
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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
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Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.


Google Webmaster Accounts
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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

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• 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.

[class101]

If you are on a shared hosting and not understanding very well how to play with chown/chmod commands, I think the best you can do is unfortunely with 777 and make sure the .htaccess file is always present in the data folder, this will deny attacks from the web for sure but the weakness is if another customer is hacked and a worms infects the machine, that worm will have a write access here, this is not really your fault but the webhost than runs apache as php module, if you are on a VPS or dedicated server then you have to learn how to run php as cgi and you can go down to a stricter chmod like Im doing with 750, you can go down to php files to 400, works fine here, but not simple & easy to setup all this, 777 saves time but not your ass heh

[Rajdeep]

Yes i m on Shared hosting.....
Thx for the help, i will ask my host abt this, maybe he will help as he is my good frend...
But on my old shared server it was working fine even with 644 permisison to files and 755 permission to folders..

Thanks once again

Originally Posted by class101

If you are on a shared hosting and not understanding very well how to play with chown/chmod commands, I think the best you can do is unfortunely with 777 and make sure the .htaccess file is always present in the data folder, this will deny attacks from the web for sure but the weakness is if another customer is hacked and a worms infects the machine, that worm will have a write access here, if you are on a VPS or dedicated server then you have to learn how to run php as cgi and you can go down to a stricter chmod like Im doing with 750 works fine here, but not simple & easy to setup all this

[David Bott]

Ok, Question...

Why is it that it makes the large files, in our case 100 of them with 50K in each, and Google says it only shows a MUCH LOWER amount submitted?

Example...
From Map Report - TOTAL URLS 5,086,481
Google Shows in Webmaster Tools - URLS Submitted 86,481 (Last downloaded 13 hours ago.)

If I go into DETAILS and look at a random sample of the file details in Google most show 0 URL's in sitemap....

Like for sitemap_1.xml.gz and sitemap_50.xml.gz Google shows...

Sitemap type Web
Submitted Dec 27, 2007
Last downloaded by Google Jan 3, 2008
Total URLs in Sitemap 0

Yet IN the the file that is on my server it shows all the data in each.

So kind of concerned tat maybe that Google does not like what is being made. Anyone have any ideas. Anyone else using a webmaster account as I am can care to look.

[iojam]

If you are running multiple servers with load balancer I suppose that googlebot might hit "wrong" server (not the one where sitemap has been generated).

[class101]

Try by adding all your sitemaps which are in you index xml directly within the google master tool

[David Bott]

Originally Posted by iojam

If you are running multiple servers with load balancer I suppose that googlebot might hit "wrong" server (not the one where sitemap has been generated).

This would be true except for the fact that in cases like this I make one master directory on our image server and then link the directories on each server to it. Thus all the servers have the same data directory. (Do the same for attachments, custom avatars, CSS files.) Thus not the case at all. The data is their.


Class101...Adding all the site maps are redundant. Google does find and use the list. Not to mention I have over 100.

From last nights run...Google Reports: Total URLs in Sitemap 98069

[David Bott]

Can someone with a Google Webmaster account also check their numbers like I did? I would love to see if I am not alone in this.

Thank you.

[class101]

Hmm for me I have in vbseo sitemap cp

Total URLs: 14327

Google webmaster tools

Sitemap statistics:
Total URLs: 14327
Indexed URLs: 4668

So my website isn't that big than yours but I see my links have all been detected, however not all yet indexed since it's reopened there is less than a month.

[peterpigman]

Originally Posted by Rajdeep

Yes i m on Shared hosting.....
Thx for the help, i will ask my host abt this, maybe he will help as he is my good frend...
But on my old shared server it was working fine even with 644 permisison to files and 755 permission to folders..

Thanks once again

I had a similar problem recently after a server move. I had to delete all my sitemaps and rewrite them. Then everything was fine.

[iettafune]

this is my report:

***************

Report Details
Generated Sitemap Details
Date 2008-01-08 13:05
Processing time 137.93 s
Total URLs 394,464 (-)
Forumdisplay URLs 376 (-)
Showthread URLs 19,368 (-)
ShowPost URLs 112,678 (-)
Archive URLs 14,260 (+175)
Member Profile URLs 64,406 (-)
Poll Results URLs 58 (-)
Blog Entries URLs 0 (-)
Sitemap Files
Index File sitemap_index.xml.gz
Sitemap File #1 sitemap_1.xml.gz (30,000 URLs, 178.87Kb) 6,021.21Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #2 sitemap_2.xml.gz (30,000 URLs, 185.90Kb) 6,042.15Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #3 sitemap_3.xml.gz (30,000 URLs, 185.13Kb) 6,024.04Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #4 sitemap_4.xml.gz (30,000 URLs, 184.49Kb) 6,020.82Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #5 sitemap_5.xml.gz (30,000 URLs, 170.61Kb) 5,910.85Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #6 sitemap_6.xml.gz (30,000 URLs, 131.45Kb) 5,532.19Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #7 sitemap_7.xml.gz (30,000 URLs, 131.14Kb) 5,531.92Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #8 sitemap_8.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 87.78Kb) 3,688.13Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #9 sitemap_9.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 87.90Kb) 3,688.09Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #10 sitemap_10.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 87.55Kb) 3,687.94Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #11 sitemap_11.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 87.60Kb) 3,688.13Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #12 sitemap_12.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 88.06Kb) 3,688.09Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #13 sitemap_13.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 87.58Kb) 3,687.94Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #14 sitemap_14.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 87.66Kb) 3,688.13Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #15 sitemap_15.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 88.03Kb) 3,688.09Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #16 sitemap_16.xml.gz (20,000 URLs, 87.56Kb) 3,687.94Kb uncompressed
Sitemap File #17 sitemap_17.xml.gz (4,464 URLs, 20.16Kb) 824.20Kb uncompressed
Text Format File urllist.txt.gz (1,641.37Kb)
Search Engines Pings
Google FAILED
Yahoo FAILED
Ask FAILED
Moreover FAILED

*************************

why i have

Search Engines Pings
Google FAILED
Yahoo FAILED
Ask FAILED
Moreover FAILED

??????????

in my google sitema tools i have sitemap with 394,464 urls....