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?

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• 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
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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
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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
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(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
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We welcome you to join the vBSEO Affiliate Program.

[EricaJoy]

i would love to use vbseo but i just can't justify the price of it. my site has no ads save some adsense on the archives that never gets looked at so everything on it, so everything on it is paid for either out of my pocket or with donations. i can't afford to spend that amount of money. i'll see what happens if i turn the rewrites off though.

[joefitz]

I'm not sure if this has already been stated but I didn't see it in the 20 some-odd pages I read nor in a search of this thread so... To get the product working with IIS, simply download the "lite" version of ISAPI_Rewrite and then use the following rewrite command:

RewriteCond Host: hostname.domain.name
RewriteRule ^/(sitemap.*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ /forums/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php\?sitemap=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/forums/(sitemap.*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ /forums/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php\?sitemap=$1 [L]

Note the leading '/' after the start of the regular expression (^); the rewrite rule wasn't working for me without it. I added two rewrite rules; one for root of my website and one for the root of my forums. I wasn't entirely sure which was appropriate so I figured I'd put both in just in case. In essence, the sitemap will now be found whether it is accessed at the webroot or my forum root...

Looking at the output of the actual sitemap_index.xml file I think the /forums rewrite is definitely required. I'm not sure if there is a reason to have the webroot rewrite in there or not; I'm guessing not... If someone in the know would like to chime in with a response that would be great.

In the meantime, everyone should know that there is a free utility (ISAPI_Rewrite the "lite" version) which enabled you to configure this plug-in completely using IIS and Windows.

[T2DMan]

Originally Posted by princessfrozen

i'll see what happens if i turn the (non vbseo) rewrites off though.

I didn't say to turn them off. Yes that is one option. My first thought was to make sure that you had hacked the vbseo sitemap program to display the rewritten url's on the sitemap.

I dont know what rewrite program you have, but it may be that even though there are some deficiencies in it, it may be better than the base vBulletin package which has lots of duplicate url's of its own.

Changing url's is not something to be taken lightly. People start quoting the url's in your forum and so changing url's means those quoted url's go no where.

[T3MEDIA]

odd mine says saved to my forum root but nothing is there.

[iojam]

T3MEDIA,

sitemap files are physically stored in /vbseo_sitemap/data/ folder.
And sitemap links point to forums root using mod_rewrite entry added in .htaccess.

[jlaine]

Anyone notice this wording @ yahoo?

A text file containing a list of URLs, each URL at the start of a new line. The filename of the URL list file must be urllist.txt; for a compressed file the name must be urllist.txt.gz.

I've had yahoo grab the data before when it says sitemap.txt.gz, but perhaps it may be prudent to change the name to urllist.txt.gz per the above?

[vBSEO]

Originally Posted by jlaine

Anyone notice this wording @ yahoo?

A text file containing a list of URLs, each URL at the start of a new line. The filename of the URL list file must be urllist.txt; for a compressed file the name must be urllist.txt.gz.

I've had yahoo grab the data before when it says sitemap.txt.gz, but perhaps it may be prudent to change the name to urllist.txt.gz per the above?

Will be updated in v.1.7 (to be released shortly) - Thanks

[ChuanSE]

why do i have a sitemap.txt.gz in the data folder instead of sitemap.txt? or can yahoo read the gz file?

[aacircle]

Yahoo can read the sitemap.txt.gz file. It's a compressed text file.

[iojam]

ChuanSE,

yes, Yahoo can read sitemap files compressed with gzip.