Spider friendly URLs

For vB 2.0

This little hackette is a quick fix to allow search engine bots to spider your threads.

Although this will allow the bots to index every thread on your site, it will not make the threads 'search engine optimized'. They will see exactly what you see when you visit your site. It simply removes the CGI bits from the URL's which prevents most search engine bots from spidering more than one level deep.

If you want a hack that allows to fully customize how the thread will look to the search engine bot, you should look at Overgrows more complete hack here.

The advantage of this hack over Overgrows is that it does not require htaccess support which can have performance issues. This could also be seen as a disadvantage though as my hack requires that you have mod_rewrite enabled on your Apache Server, whereas Overgrows method should work with just about any web host out there.

Take yer pick

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by DenzoForums

My archives are not working.. not vbulletin problem, but apparently the sever i am hosted on doesn;t support some feature for that to work. Is there anything else i can do?

The Archive needs to have:

AcceptPathInfo On

You can try this setting in .htaccess

Google for "AcceptPathInfo" and ".htaccess" may come back with more details.

[DenzoForums]

Where does that go? anywhere in the .htaccess file?
What does it do?

When i click on the archive link, i get re-directed to my forumhome page. Is this to fix that?

Sorry.. I'm a bit confused..

Thanks
Dave

[DenzoForums]

Originally Posted by lierduh

The Archive needs to have:

AcceptPathInfo On

You can try this setting in .htaccess

Google for "AcceptPathInfo" and ".htaccess" may come back with more details.

That didn't work..
anybody else have any suggestions?

[lierduh]

Originally Posted by DenzoForums

That didn't work..
anybody else have any suggestions?

That directive should work in .htaccess according to:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/core.html

Have you checked google as I suggested? What have you tried? What problem you have had? what sort of error you have encountered?

Actually have you done a search at the forums of vbulletin.com? regarding archive or perhaps AcceptPathInfo.

Also read my post in this thread might help you to use .htaccess:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=223

Others can only help you if you try for yourself and come back with more details.

[DenzoForums]

actually, i have been looking into this.. I read in a few threads that acceptpathinfo will not work if your httpd.conf file is not allowing it.

I have posted here, and in vbulletin.com asking for some instruction on that file.
I do not see it in ftp, or SSH - although I am not handy with SSH and don't know where or how to look.

After some reading it seems I need to allow vB to override my apache settings in httpd.conf or this will not work. Unfortunately that is where I am stuck.

Does anyone know what needs to be changed in my httpd.conf to allow the AcceptPathInfo option to work?

This quote is from this thread from another person having same problem as me.
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90456


So what i need now is to find out how to edit that httpd.conf file, so it will allow the changes in .htaccess

Like I said before.. I have no idea where that file is, and if I can even get to it. My host does allow SSH access, but i do not know any commands. Dos commands not working :-)

Thanks
DAve

[Haakon]

Denzo, the server httpd.conf file is probably in /etc/httpd/conf, and you can probably reach it with ssh (not ftp). You are not able to edit it though, but you can check if it is configed propperly

Concerning this hack and vB3. I`ve managed to add the rewrites to the forums, but not to the threads. I can`t find the clean
<a href="showthread.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&threadid=$thread[threadid]">$thread[title]</a>

I only find those with $highlight and $lastpost.
And pagenav url seems to be linked to a $address variable I can`t find.
I appreciate some help, as allways

[DenzoForums]

Originally Posted by Haakon

Denzo, the server httpd.conf file is probably in /etc/httpd/conf, and you can probably reach it with ssh (not ftp). You are not able to edit it though, but you can check if it is configed propperly

Concerning this hack and vB3. I`ve managed to add the rewrites to the forums, but not to the threads. I can`t find the clean
<a href="showthread.php?s=$session[sessionhash]&threadid=$thread[threadid]">$thread[title]</a>

I only find those with $highlight and $lastpost.
And pagenav url seems to be linked to a $address variable I can`t find.
I appreciate some help, as allways

I found this

<span class="smallfont" style="float:$stylevar[right]"><strong>$vbphrase[thread]</strong>: <a href="showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]t=$threadinfo[threadid]">$threadinfo[title]</a></span>

in the newreply template.. but that's about it..

As far as me finding the httpd.conf file..No good. I am sure it's not onfigured right, becasue it's not working for me.. but so far I am unable to verify that..

Thanks
Dave

[Polo]

has anyone made this hack work for vb3.0.1?

[Haakon]

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^musicforum([0-9]+)\.html$ forumdisplay.php?f=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^musicforum([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)\.html$ forumdisplay.php?f=$1&page=$2&sort=lastpost&order= &pp=20&daysprune=45 [L]
RewriteRule ^musicthread([0-9]+)\.html$ showthread.php?t=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^musicthread([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)\.html$ showthread.php?t=$1&page=$2&pp=10 [L]

I`ve got these working (exchange musicforum and musicthread with your topics of course).

And basically just try the find the corresponding things in vb3 from what is described in lierduh`s post :
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=223
Try it, and if something specific comes up, I will try to help.

PS. Try one rule at a time.

[cscgal]

Hey guys! I've written a detailed tutorial how to mod_rewrite vBulletin 3.

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread9379.html