Miscellaneous Hacks - vB Global Translator - Multiply your indexed pages & put search traffic on autopilot

vB Global Translator

Note - There are 2 versions of this script depending on your setup. This script is compatible with users running standard vBulletin and vBSEO only and all vB release versions. If you cannot install this I am more than happy to answer support questions.

So what does this do?

vB Global Translator automatically translates your forum into 28 other languages via the Google translate API, stores those translations in a MYSQL database then rewrites new URLs so you end up with 28 new pages for every current page.

So, if you have 10,000 pages, this MOD will translate those pages into 28 languages making a total of 280,000 pages in 28 languages. This results in a flood of international traffic and referrals from the search engines. If you are getting 1,000 visits a day from your 10,000 pages imagine how many referrals you will get from 280,000 pages!

The current languages this MOD works with are all supported by AdSense so you can expect your income to rise accordingly. I have this running on a 20,000 page forum and after a few months I have more than doubled my search engine traffic.

How do I Install?

Note - Please make sure you have CURL enabled on your server, it will be listed in you php.ini file. If in doubt ask your host.

First download the relevant package below for your setup.

Next you need to add a new MySQL database to your domain to store the translated pages. Open the database in phpmyadmin or similar and import the db.sql file to install the database tables. Once you have done that you need to select the 'wt_cache' table on the left then 'operations' from the top menu and change the storage engine to InnoDB, then click Go.

Add your new database details to translate.php then, if your forums base language is different to English, change your country code. Otherwise ignore this step.

Find:

REMOVED

Change en to:

REMOVED

Next save translate.php and upload that, translateflags.php and overloadcache.txt to your forum root, so if your forums are in a /forums/ folder upload these files there. Upload the flags folder to your domain root, thats the domain root.

CHMOD overloadcache.txt to 777

In your vBulletin admin panel add a new plugin with the following settings.

Hook Location: global_complete
Title: vB Global Translator
Execution Order: 5
Plugin PHP Code:

REMOVED

Save the plugin and activate.

In your vBulletin admin panel add another new plugin with the following settings.

Hook Location: global_start
Title: vB Global Translator Flags
Execution Order: 5
Plugin PHP Code:

REMOVED

Save and activate.

Finally add the code below to your template so the flags to select languages appear. This is typically the header, navbar or footer so that they display on every page.

REMOVED

Load Issues:

This script is can be quite server intensive for large sites. As you are adding links to all of these new pages from all of your current pages the search engine bots will crawl these 1,000's of new pages fast. As the MySQL trys to deal with the many, many translations and querys I have seen my server load spike a bit.

To combat this we have written in a condition that if server load is more than 1.5, the cache setting will disable and pages will be read live from the Google API and no database writing will take place.

If you feel this setting too high/low you can change it by finding the variable below in translate.php and editing accordingly. The only reason to change this is if - A) You are on a slow server and it is overloaded/crashing or B) You have a very fast server and it can handle more, this will mean your site will get fully cached faster resulting in faster page load times when people re-visit the translated pages.

if(floatval(getServerLoad()) >= 1.5)

One final thing to remember is while your site is being cached and data written to the new database read access times to already cached pages may vary. Uncached pages need to be translated and this can take time when translating a fresh page. Cached pages may load fast or slow depending on whether your server is under load or not as when under load read access from the database is disabled. You just need to be patient and wait until your site is fully cached which will vary between site size, server spec and how often search bots crawl your pages.

Please rate and click install

THANK YOU!

Version History:

v1.7

* Removed ioncube encryption to bring script inline with vBulletin.org rules

v1.6

* Fixed nofollow block on flag links for users with vbseo sites
* Fixed adsense ads showing for translation services etc. by adding section targeting ignore tags

v1.5

* Fixed database speed issues by using InnoDB instead of MyISAM
* Code encrypted with ioncube

v1.0

* Script base version

[The Realist]

Installed and working but when I go here: http://www.xxxxxxx.co.uk/photoplog/index.php

I get this error:

Code Removed.

Any ideas?

Works everywhere else.

[Dave Hybrid]

Originally Posted by The Realist

Installed and working but when I go here: http://www.sattalk.co.uk/photoplog/index.php

I get this error:

Warning: require_once(translate.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/functions.php(5721) : eval()'d code on line 9

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'translate.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/sattalk/public_html/includes/functions.php(5721) : eval()'d code on line 9

Any ideas?

Works everywhere else.

try uploading translate.php to the photoplg folder

[The Realist]

Yep that did the trick, well done

[SuperTaz]

Seems to be working great on my site so far with no errors.

[RWerksman]

Originally Posted by Dave Hybrid

I believe this only works for sites in one base language. As per the first install instruction you need to set your base language so the script knows what to tell the Google translate APi to translate from and into. So multiple languages will confuse it a lot and cause errors.

Dave,

Then correct me if I'm wrong here - this would effectively drive traffic to your forum then it wouldn't be able to cope with anyone actually replying to messages, correct?

[Dave Hybrid]

This mod will drive foreign visitors you otherwise would net get to your pages, if they want to contribute they will need to also speak your base language. That said on most sites 90% of search traffic bounces after reading one page via the back button or an advert. So, on my sites all this really does is increase my CPM on my banners and adsense clicks. For free. You're use may vary.

If you are simply wanting to offer parts of your site in other languages as a feature rather than a search traffic tool look into language packs. You will however need to create new content in those languages in order to get search referrals, language packs will not translate a site. They just allow other languages to be used.

[Dave Hybrid]

I have just made a leap in improving load times on large sites, we found that on big sites the sheer volume of MySQL writes being made as the search bots and users try to translate all your pages was locking the translate database. This means cached pages were loading slow, even though they were cached and a few other bugs. The new method seems to allow sites to be cached much faster with lower server load and cached pages load instant or there abouts. I will update when we are 100%, it's a simple upgrade too. Thanks.

[Sweeks]

We upgraded to a VPS tonight and now it gives a blank page, any fix for this?

http://www.teenforumz.com/?hl=ar

Thanks!

[Dave Hybrid]

<font color="Red">Ok so here is the information for those of you experiencing slow load times, it is recommended that all users make these changes.</font>

Add a new MySQL database to your domain. Open the database in phpmyadmin or similar and import the db.sql file to install the database tables the same as before but once you have done that you need to select 'operations' from the top menu and change the storage engine to InnoDB, then click Go. Then enter the new DB details into translate.php and re-upload that file.

InnoDB seems to handle the multiple read/write requests without issue whereas MyISAM had issues with tables locking and thus locking read/write access under load which caused huge bottlenecks on larger/busier sites.

We tested this on a few huge 100k thread sites without issue.

Thanks, enjoy the traffic.

Dave.

[Sweeks]

Would this sort out the blank page after moving servers?