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

[The Piper]

I am having trouble with forumjump after installing this hack. Even if I have forumjump turned on on my control panel, it doesn't work. So I can't merge or move threads, for instance. Any thoughts on this issue?

[Thomas P]

Okay, my hoster finally told me, that I need a RewriteCondition statement on his servers (?) in order for rewrites to work.

Is there a standard RewriteCond I can use or do we poor .htaccess users need a special one for this hack?

[Dontom]

I installed this great hack - the day after a part of my forums & threads already were present in google
tom

[AWS]

Just to show this hack actually works and works well

[fello9]

Originally posted by The Piper
I am having trouble with forumjump after installing this hack. Even if I have forumjump turned on on my control panel, it doesn't work. So I can't merge or move threads, for instance. Any thoughts on this issue?

Any answer on how to fix this problem?

[Erwin]

You need to edit your postings.php - there is a post in this thread on how to do this already.

[The Piper]

Originally posted by Erwin
You need to edit your postings.php - there is a post in this thread on how to do this already.

I installed this fix, and although I haven't even tested it, it only works for merging threads. I still get the same problem when trying to move threads, the forumjump doesn't show up, so all I get is a link to "Please select forum:", and no forum shows up. That is, I can't move threads at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Erwin]

This hack doesn't affect forumjump, so I don't know why your forumjump is like that to be honest.

[fastforward]

Originally posted by The Piper

the forumjump doesn't show up, so all I get is a link to "Please select forum:", and no forum shows up. That is, I can't move threads at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Have you set <base href="http://yoursite.com/forum/">
in the header?

If that still doesn't work, you may have to edit the window.location() javascript functions in the templates and prefix them with a forward slash or the forum url.

[fello9]

Anyone knows what I need to code the "page navigation" numbers to be Search Engine Friendly?

I know it can be done, because I saw these guys have done it at: http://www.techimo.com/forum/f3/index.html . This links look
like this:
http://www.techimo.com/forum/fid3/dp1000/so/sflastpost/pp50/pn2/index.html .

[tpearl5]

I ran into a new problem. I recently changed servers and it seems as though mod_rewrite isn't working at all. Every page comes up with a 404.

Take a look: http://board.midibuddy.net

No links work!! AHH!!

mod_rewrite is enabled on the server. Everything should work fine, right? This is what my .htaccess file looks like:

PHP Code:

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)/?$ forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L] 
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)\.html$ showthread.php?threadid=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)\.html$ showthread.php?threadid=$1&perpage=15&pagenumber=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)/$ forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&daysprune=1000&sortorder=&sortfield=lastpost&perpage=40&pagenumber=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^[ft]([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/(.+)$ /$3 [L] 


HELP!!!

[codewebs]

i know this is a old post, but when i use the fix for whos online it says viewing thread without the link to the thread and the same as viewing forum

[cyc]

Hi guys

Geat hack.....its the sole reason why i converted from yabbse to vbulletin yesterday

I've installed it but i think its still using sessions http://www.cyclingforums.com/f48/s isnt this a problem for google?

It would be good to be able to get rid of sessions unless they were required

great hack btw

cheers!

[fastforward]

Originally posted by cyc
Hi guys

Geat hack.....its the sole reason why i converted from yabbse to vbulletin yesterday

I've installed it but i think its still using sessions http://www.cyclingforums.com/f48/s isnt this a problem for google?

It would be good to be able to get rid of sessions unless they were required

great hack btw

cheers!

You probably don't want to rely on the file in the first post. Use the following rewrite rules and make sure you change all the templates to remove any passing of the sessionhash. Obviously you will also need to force everybody to use cookies on your board.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)/?$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)/s?$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/t([0-9]+)\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/t([0-9]+)/s([^/]?)\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^/s([^/\?]0-9)+/$ /index.php?s=$1 [L]

[Haakon]

This hack is even better than you think cyc, my small board gets about 1000 uniques a day because of this genious hack (got to have some page rank though, which you have)

But I really want to second fello9`s question about the secret to enable this hack for page navigation. Do you have an idea fastforward, or anyone?

Thanks,
Haakon