Mini Mods - Redirect Archive Search Engine Results To Full Forum

Another plugin that came about due to my own personal needs and which I thought I'd share.


Description:

What this does is hooks into the top of your forum's archive script (ex: this forum's archive) and checks the referrer that the user's browser sends. If it's from Google, Yahoo, or MSN searches, then it redirects to the full version of the index/forum/thread/whatever.

This is needed (IMO) since the search engines crawl that archive and very often show links to it in search results. However, it's rather ugly and has no reply box, etc. etc., so incoming users shouldn't be seeing it.

This plugin does not block access to the archive though. If you click the archive link in your footer or manually type in the URL to it, you won't notice any difference.


Installation:

Download and install the attached product. It's just a single plugin, but products are more powerful, so I thought I'd wrap it into a whole product.


How do I know if it's working right?

Go to Google and type this into the search box:

site:http://yoursite.com/forum/archive/

That will bring up a list of links to pages in your archive. When you click on one, your forum should redirect you from the archives to the main forum.


It's still not working right!

Reply to this thread and let me know. I may need to slightly adjust the checks to see if you're coming from a search engine or not.

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DON'T FORGET TO CLICK INSTALL!


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[ZzZ_ZzZ]

thanks

[noonespecial]

Is there anyway to modify this to work with printthread.php results too?

[alexanderpas]

Originally Posted by noonespecial

Is there anyway to modify this to work with printthread.php results too?

just forbid your bots to even move in there

[rjmjr69]

installed does not work for me 3.6.4 . Type in url and still displays my regular archive

[rjmjr69]

Hello any support on this?

[jmw]

This can get you banned from Google. It appears to be cloaking per original hack explanation.

[my_aly]

ty man

[Viper007Bond]

Originally Posted by rjmjr69

installed does not work for me 3.6.4 . Type in url and still displays my regular archive

As intended. This doesn't block users from using your archive.

To get it to "trigger", go to Google and type this into the search box:

site:http://yoursite.com/forum/archive/

Then click one of the links. You should be taken to the real thread.

[Viper007Bond]

Originally Posted by jmw

This can get you banned from Google. It appears to be cloaking per original hack explanation.

Honestly, I'm not sure which side of the line it falls on as it only applies to users incoming from a search engine.

It's not as if it's detecting the bot's user agent and then displaying different content to the search bot in an attempt to change page rank or whatever.

It's simply redirecting to the real thread when the archive is found via a search engine. If you directly browse to the archive, it won't do any redirecting.

So personally, I don't think Google would have a problem with this. Then again, I can't speak for Google.

[yathyo]

Thanks Viper, nice plugin! If you want to avoid duplicated contents at Search Engines replace PHP Code with the following one:

PHP Code:


    if ( $threadinfo['threadid'] ){
        header ('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
        header('Location:'. $vbulletin->options['bburl'] . '/showthread.php?t=' . $threadinfo['threadid']);
        exit();
    }