vbSpiderFriend - Search Engine Friendliness

I am tired of my 200,000 posts not being listed in Google. I was inspired by phpbuilder.com this morning and I wrote:

vbSpiderFriend - the search engine indexer for all of your posts

Purpose: Allow search engine spiders to crawl a linked list of all of your posts.

Project Requirements:

-Friendly URLs (no query strings)
-Good dynamic meta tags
-Never have to touch the script again.. It is Y3K compliant, simply re-submit to the engines to update your listings

Install Requirements:

-vBulletin 1.x or 2.x
-about 10 minutes


1) Download the attached Zip.

2) Open class.mysql.php and put your database login info at the top.

3) Create a new directory called archive under your forum, like /forum/archive

4) Open the included .htaccess and change the Error 404 to your new archive path.

5) Open index.php and change the self-explanatory variables at the top of the file.

6) Upload all 3 files to your archive directory.

7) Submit /forum/archive/index.php to search engines and watch em crawl


DISCLAIMER: I don't use 2.x but I checked the schema and this should work fine.

NOTES: This uses ErrorDocument and query string parsing to get the variables needed. I do not have the time or energy to troubleshoot this if it does not work on your server. Sorry!

Originally posted by CoolaShacka
Yes.
my .htaccess is

ErrorDocument 404 /home/csbvu/public_html/archive/index.php

I am hosted by VO

The redirect should be an absolute web address not a unix path!

Replace with:

ErrorDocument 404 /archive/index.php

Originally posted by JohnL
Is there any way to get this to work on a W2K server with IIS?

I did the redirect for the 404 error but it just reloads the index page. Here is an example http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/archive/index.php

This is probably occuring because the PHP file isn't able to get the original URL that was requested.

Create a new index.php and add <? phpinfo(); ?> in it. Now try to cause a 404 and look at the enviromental variables that hold the requested URL. Use that enviromental variable inside the original index.php file.

THANK YOU...THANK YOU...THANK YOU

OK all you IIS guys. Thanks to Razzie...

Do a search for REQUEST_URI and replace it with QUERY_STRING and you are good to go!

Originally posted by Razzie
This is probably occuring because the PHP file isn't able to get the original URL that was requested.

Thanks again Razzie

Originally posted by Razzie
Small Bug with displaying private forums:

Excellent catch! Razzie, you da man, grandma!

[CoolaShacka]

Originally posted by Razzie


The redirect should be an absolute web address not a unix path!

Replace with:

ErrorDocument 404 /archive/index.php

Thank you Man.
All works fine now.

Originally posted by CoolaShacka

Thank you Man.
All works fine now.

My god, so many pages, anyway is this hack done now?
If so could someone just post it on the hack release forum? :]

I just started my forum, but when i go to for exaple: vbb/archive/2 it goes to my error404 page

Originally posted by OmniSlash31
I just started my forum, but when i go to for exaple: vbb/archive/2 it goes to my error404 page

You need to redirect 404 errors to the /archive/index.php file as has been discussed in this thread.

Ok, i have a folder called "vbb" on my server for the forum.
So, .htaccess should be
ErrorDocument 404 /vbb/archive/index.php, right?

[CoolaShacka]

No.
.htaccess should be
ErrorDocument 404 /archive/index.php, but you have to put the .htaccess in your vbb folder