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'm having some issues with forumdisplay. Please check http://www.pinkfloydfan.net/f20.html and look at the page navigation. Click on any of them, say, page 2. I'm taken to an URL such as http://www.pinkfloydfan.net/forumdis...age=50-2.html, which does not work (that is, I'm shown the first page of the forum as well).

I'd really appreciate any input on this, please. I've changed everything according to this post, and have already doublechecked it.

Thanks a lot,
Paulo

[The Piper]

Ok, since the issues I brought up on my last post were also happening in other parts of the site (for instance, in the Control Panel, while choosing an avatar, users could not choose any page other than 2 - we've got lots of avatars), he would get an URL such as the one described on the past post.

I've just uninstalled all the parts of this hack that deal with page navigation and, of course, everything is working fine again. Of course search engines won't be indexing any pages other than page 1 of all of my threads, but at least everything is working.

If anyone got these problems and/or wants to try to fix them, I'll try to help.

Just thought I'd post my experiences here.

[slinky]

There has to be an easy way of doing this... all my pages are html using the mod rewrite and I've made the mod a long, long time ago....

[PurpleCow]

Hii all,

This is a TOP most important hack for vBulletin that was ever done and will be ever done ( might be ), if someone can get it to work with every aspect/page of vbulletin (incase it is yet to be done ?? ) !

I would want to use this hack on my yet to be launched forums and i'd like to know, if the attachment in the first post of this thread is a workiable version for this hack ?? If not kindly attach a file with instructions to get it to work !

I do have a suggestion for fastforward and all other lead developers, contributing developers and behind the scene developers :

Kindly contact Brett_tbake of WebMasterWorld, who has successfully implemented this kind of hack for his forums. however, we should keep in mind that his forums are custom coded and not using vBulletin. but what i mean to say is that, he can sure give you some inputs to make this hack easy to use and get it to work.

I request one of you developers get in touch with him there at webmasterworld.com.

I do have another question :

My forums are installed in a subdomain, meaning.... http://xyz.mydomain.com and not /forums/ type of directory, if i have to get this to work, what if any changes should i make ??

Also, kindly some one give me a link to the thread for Overgorw's hack on this , none of the previously potsed url's work for me !

As a sidenote, i'd like to mention that i am using version 2.3.0, and i hope this hack works for this latest version ??

Thank you very much for working on this hack.

Cheers

[slinky]

My hack seems to work. It's simple but I have no idea if they are being properly indexed. Search engines change their search methods over time and it is tough to track. I've been keeping my forums as is (my pages end in .html files) since it works and little hassle.

But hacks are hacks. A writer is under no obligation to provide support whatsoever so we have to live with it.

[cyc]

Today at 02:01 AM slinky said this in Post #255
My hack seems to work. It's simple but I have no idea if they are being properly indexed. Search engines change their search methods over time and it is tough to track.

It looks like you have to register before you can browse your forums. This will also stop search engines from spidering your threads, in other words you may as well not have this hack installed :laugh:

cheers!

[lierduh]

03-24-03 at 03:12 PM The Piper said this in Post #251
I'm having some issues with forumdisplay. Please check http://www.pinkfloydfan.net/f20.html and look at the page navigation. Click on any of them, say, page 2. I'm taken to an URL such as http://www.pinkfloydfan.net/forumdis...age=50-2.html, which does not work (that is, I'm shown the first page of the forum as well).

I'd really appreciate any input on this, please. I've changed everything according to this post, and have already doublechecked it.

Thanks a lot,
Paulo

That means the templates have not been changed properly. You should see f20-15-2.html or something like that when it is done properly.

[amk35]

just curious....should the forumdisplay links look like:
forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=14&daysprune=30&sortor der=&sortfield=lastpost&perpag e=40-3.html

?

All the other links are now short with no "?" symbols etc.

Thanks. Great work btw, much appreciated!

[amk35]

Hi Lierduh

I'm having one problem with the hack. Clicking on any of the links at the bottom of forumdisplay (2,3,4 etc) brings up the same page, page 1. I saw someone else had this problem and I changed the rewrite rule as you suggested, but the problem still exists. Any ideas? Thanks.

[lierduh]

04-01-03 at 01:13 PM amk35 said this in Post #259
Hi Lierduh

I'm having one problem with the hack. Clicking on any of the links at the bottom of forumdisplay (2,3,4 etc) brings up the same page, page 1. I saw someone else had this problem and I changed the rewrite rule as you suggested, but the problem still exists. Any ideas? Thanks.

Please provide the problem URLs, you can remove the domain part if you do not want to reveal that. Please also provide the related rewrite rules.

(PS: Don't pay anyone until you do this, it could just be a simply fix.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...090#post377090

)