Major Additions - Zoints SEO

********Please do not use this modification unless you are VERY well educated on SEO and forum modification********

Zoints is a company that believes that forums are the killer application of the internet. We want to empower forum owners to take their community to the next level. Therefore, Zoints has been developing an extremely powerful vBulletin forum SEO and revenue enhancing solution for more than two years now. However, because we are focusing on our Forum Network and Thread Tagging System, we have decided to release this SEO solution to the vBulletin community under the lgpl license. Zoints SEO is now open source and NOT supported by us. We hope that the vBulletin dev community comes together to take this already powerful solution and make it even better. Empower yourselves

Zoints SEO can be discussed here or http://network.zoints.com (again, we will not be providing official support).


Known bugs

1. If a user disables cookies, infinite redirect loop.
2. index2, index3 pagination breaks some things. Standard p2, p3 works fine.


Zoints SEO is currently incompatible with: POSSIBLE FIX. PLEASE TRY THIS AND REPORT BACK. THANK YOU!
1. Incompatibility with vBA Gallery link.
2. Incompatibility with vBA Links
3. Improper linking from vBA CMPS Recent threads
4. Google Maps
[s]5. Non english characters[/s] - Character replacement is now available.


Without further ado:

[MusicMan]

Originally Posted by eNforce

Does vB installation come default with a .htaccess file?

The contents of my htaccess file is completely blank, could someone maybe post their entire .htaccess please? This might solve my SEO problem, I don't know but worth a try.

Here's the portion of my htaccess file that adds rewrite for zseo.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^keepmusicalive\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.keepmusicalive.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(f|all)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ forumdisplay.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(t|p)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ showthread.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(index\.php|\.css) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(archive|sitemap)/(.*)$ $1/index.php/$2 [QSA,L]

But it's important to note that I have enabled a 301 redirect that essentially directs all my homepage traffic (http://keepmusicalive.com, http://keepmusicalive.com/index.php, etc...) to be redirected to http://www.keepmusicalive.com which is the forumhome page at this domain. I've enabled the "redirect index.php" option in the ZSEO CP, and I've also enabled my archive to act as a sitemap and to be renamed as Sitemap.

So if your forumhome page is yourdomain.com/forums, or if you have different settings enabled, your htaccess will look differently than mine.

[Hornstar]

Sounds like this will compete with vbseo and as this is open source im sure some others may help this come along, however I have to admit, im extremely happy with vbseo and there support. but im sure tons of vb people will find this usefull if they cant afford a paid solution.

[Ramsesx]

Originally Posted by MusicMan

This is a wonderful hack that I've been using for a while now. It has developed into an amazing free SEO hack and it has been very helpful to my sites. While it may not be supported yet, if you guys have any questions about it, I'd be happy to try and help out however I can. I've used it for around 6+ months and am pretty familiar with its features and benefits.

*Clicked install*

Thanks for your help offer, you can tell me how to exclude the /gallery folder in the .htaccess?
B.t.w. on your site there's the same bug I have, the ? Previous Thread | Next Thread ? are not working right. Thanks

[MusicMan]

Originally Posted by Ramsesx

Thanks for your help offer, you can tell me how to exclude the /gallery folder in the .htaccess?
B.t.w. on your site there's the same bug I have, the ? Previous Thread | Next Thread ? are not working right. Thanks

Thanks, I've never had any reports of that before. It could very well be because I haven't upgraded to this latest version yet. I don't know if it contains a fix for what you reported, but I do need to upgrade.

I'll look through this thread to see exactly what you're wanting to do as far as excluding the /gallery folder.

EDIT: Ok, I found where you said that /gallery is redirecting to the /forums directory. Couple of questions for you....

1. Did this start when adding the Zoints SEO product or when you last edited your htaccess file?

2. Post or PM your htaccess file so I can look at it. Things will be a bit different since your forumhome root is yourdomain.com/forums, and requires a different type of redirect.

3. Just to clarify, are you only using the redirect to get rid of http:// versus http://www. PR splitting and dupe content, as well as getting rid of /index.php for the same purposes? Or are you also redirecting yourdomain.com to lead to yourdomain.com/forums?

I might not be able to help, but if you'll let me know what you're working with and what you're needing to do, I can at least give it a shot.

[Ramsesx]

Originally Posted by MusicMan

Thanks, I've never had any reports of that before. It could very well be because I haven't upgraded to this latest version yet. I don't know if it contains a fix for what you reported, but I do need to upgrade.

I'll look through this thread to see exactly what you're wanting to do as far as excluding the /gallery folder.

EDIT: Ok, I found where you said that /gallery is redirecting to the /forums directory. Couple of questions for you....

1. Did this start when adding the Zoints SEO product or when you last edited your htaccess file?

2. Post or PM your htaccess file so I can look at it. Things will be a bit different since your forumhome root is yourdomain.com/forums, and requires a different type of redirect.

3. Just to clarify, are you only using the redirect to get rid of http:// versus http://www. PR splitting and dupe content, as well as getting rid of /index.php for the same purposes? Or are you also redirecting yourdomain.com to lead to yourdomain.com/forums?

I might not be able to help, but if you'll let me know what you're working with and what you're needing to do, I can at least give it a shot.

Thanks a lot MusicMan,
1. This only occur if I set Enable Zoints SEO to "yes" and have the original unchanged .htaccess
2. .htacces file is:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^(escort-gallery) - [L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(f|all)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ forumdisplay.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(t|p)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ showthread.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(index\.php|\.css) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(archive|sitemap)/(.*)$ $1/index.php/$2 [QSA,L]

The first line is added but not working, it's also not working (means it still points to the forum directory) with the original file.
3. Don't know what you mean, use it only for the zoints default settings + Rewrite URLs and insert keywords, (using mod_rewrite).
Thanks again.

Please who is going to help me... i download this mod.. but i want some information about .htaccess this file doesn't excist in my root. i am sure of this.. how can i create this file.. witch is the code that i must put and then the code of the Zoint seo where can i put???

Thank u

[Ramsesx]

Originally Posted by L'ingegnere

Please who is going to help me... i download this mod.. but i want some information about .htaccess this file doesn't excist in my root. i am sure of this.. how can i create this file.. witch is the code that i must put and then the code of the Zoint seo where can i put???

Thank u

Load up the attached txt file to your server and rename it to .htaccess it is the code taken from the README.txt (it is recommended to read this).

Originally Posted by Ramsesx

Load up the attached txt file to your server and rename it to .htaccess it is the code taken from the README.txt (it is recommended to read this).

Thanks Ramsesx I read it but i thought that wasn't enough... becuse when i read: File: /.htaccess (If it does not exist, create it).. i thought that when i will create this file i was adding another code except this..

But thanks

So i did the installation but when i try to open a discussion it said:

The requested URL /forum/ggdxggh-f34.html was not found on this server.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apache/2.2.2 (Fedora) DAV/2 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 PHP/5.1.4 mod_python/3.2.8 Python/2.4.2 mod_ssl/2.2.2 OpenSSL/0.9.8a mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8

Can anybody help me??

[MusicMan]

Originally Posted by Ramsesx

3. Don't know what you mean, use it only for the zoints default settings + Rewrite URLs and insert keywords, (using mod_rewrite).
Thanks again.

Ok, I'm not 100% sure of what all you're needing to do with your rewrites but here's what I see.

http://mc-escort.de has a PR0
http://www.mc-escort.de has a PR3, so it makes sense to go ahead and redirect to http://www instead of to http://

So, backup your current htaccess and give this one a shot. Replace everything you posted above with the following.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mc-escort\.de
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mc-escort.de/$1 [R=permanent,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(f|all)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ forumdisplay.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9_\-]*-(t|p)[0-9]+(p[0-9]+|/index[0-9]*)?\.html)$ showthread.php/$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(index\.php|\.css) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(archive|sitemap)/(.*)$ $1/index.php/$2 [QSA,L]

It may or may not work exactly like you're wanting, but it's worth a shot. Let me know if that fixes the /gallery redirecting to /forums.