Major Additions - Zoints SEO

********Please do not use this modification unless you are VERY well educated on SEO and forum modification********

Zoints is a company that believes that forums are the killer application of the internet. We want to empower forum owners to take their community to the next level. Therefore, Zoints has been developing an extremely powerful vBulletin forum SEO and revenue enhancing solution for more than two years now. However, because we are focusing on our Forum Network and Thread Tagging System, we have decided to release this SEO solution to the vBulletin community under the lgpl license. Zoints SEO is now open source and NOT supported by us. We hope that the vBulletin dev community comes together to take this already powerful solution and make it even better. Empower yourselves

Zoints SEO can be discussed here or http://network.zoints.com (again, we will not be providing official support).


Known bugs

1. If a user disables cookies, infinite redirect loop.
2. index2, index3 pagination breaks some things. Standard p2, p3 works fine.


Zoints SEO is currently incompatible with: POSSIBLE FIX. PLEASE TRY THIS AND REPORT BACK. THANK YOU!
1. Incompatibility with vBA Gallery link.
2. Incompatibility with vBA Links
3. Improper linking from vBA CMPS Recent threads
4. Google Maps
[s]5. Non english characters[/s] - Character replacement is now available.


Without further ado:

[curt5446]

Hi,

Not sure if anyone is still having the problem of a redirect to the site index when clicking on forums. I had the same problem and got it working by (duhhh) making sure htaccess was enabled on my server.

Hope that helps

Curt

[curt5446]

Oh alomost forgot.

Dave, thanks VERY much for this.

[nocte]

TEMPLATE: threadbit:

Find:
==================================================
			<if condition="$show['gotonewpost']"><a href="showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]goto=newpost&amp;t=$thread[threadid]"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/firstnew.gif" alt="$vbphrase[go_to_first_new_post]" border="0" /></a></if>
==================================================
Replace With:
==================================================
			<if condition="$show['gotonewpost']"><a href="<if condition="$show['zointsurl']">$thread[zointsurl]?goto=newpost<else />showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]goto=newpost&amp;t=$thread[threadid]</if>"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/firstnew.gif" alt="$vbphrase[go_to_first_new_post]" border="0" /></a></if>
==================================================

this does not work in vB 3.6.3
the result is a link to www.forum.com/forum/#postXXX

[citricguy]

First of all, thank you so much for releasing this mod. It is amazing!

After I got everything installed I noticed that I cannot follow links within my archive/sitemap directory. Everything else seems to work fine.

Here is the link to my archive/sitemap post install:

http://www.chaosforums.com/sitemap/

You will notice as you click on the links it will not take you any deeper into the archive. I think its the .htaccess file messing things up, but cant tell.

im running 3.6.3

[nocte]

There's another problem: If you guess the ID of a thread in a private forum you can see the title, because you will be redirected to the rewritten url (with the keywords from the title) before you see an error mesage.

[nocte]

Jet another one: If you go to http://www.chaosforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1 you will be redirected to http://www.chaosforums.com/managemen...er-f1.html?f=1 so the parameter f=1 is suffixed, tough we don't need it.

[nocte]

if fount a bunch of bugs more:


template threadbit line 65:

<phrase 1="member.php?find=lastposter&amp;t=$thread[threadid]" 2="$thread[lastposter]">$vbphrase[by_x]</phrase> <a href="<if condition="$show['zointsurl']">$thread[zointsurl]?goto=lastpost<else />showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]p=$thread[lastpostid]$thread[highlight]#post$thread[lastpostid]</if>"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/lastpost.gif" alt="$vbphrase[go_to_last_post]" border="0" /></a>

-> this does not work with the searchengine. the serach sesult pages will link to:
http://www.yourforum.com/forum/your-title-t123.html?&highlight=keyword?goto=lastpost
while it should be
http://www.yourforum.com/forum/your-title-t123.html?highlight=keyword&goto=lastpost


template search_results_postbit line 25:

			$post[typeprefix] <a href="<if condition="$show['zointsurl']">$post[threadurl]<else />showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]t=$post[threadid]$post[highlight]</if>"><strong>$post[threadtitle]</strong></a>

does not work. it will show a link to the forum in witch the thread is located, not the thread itself.


modification of thempate forumhome_lastpostby is useless, because there will be a redirection anyway. If you do this you just have a rewritten url redirecting to another rewritten (both having parameters). I don't see an advantage doing the modification that is sugested for this template.


if you use "go to the last posting" you will be redirected to a url like this
http://www.yourforum.com/forum/your-title-t123.html?p=470529#post470529
though the last posting might not be on page 1 the url looks like it was page one. If the last posting was on page 3 the url should be
http://www.yourforum.com/forum/your-title-t123p3.html#post470529


on online.php - if a user is currently seeing a thread in the archive, the url has no keywords and two slashes, like
http://www.yourforum.com/forum/archive//t-15828.html


"Use Zoints Archive Navigation?" -> when i use this feature, no navigation shows up at all.

[redlabour]

Originally Posted by phlogiston

I'm pretty certain I've figured out why I haven't experienced problems with vBGallery (and other addons) while using Zoints SEO - I have vBa CMPS wrapped around everything and forums in root dir = not standard.


So I worked out a possible fix.
If anyone wants to try this (without guarantee!) to get Zoints SEO working on sites with photopost's vBGallery (may also solve the incompatibility with vBadvanced Links Directory) I'm fairly/quite confident it may work. (I apologise for the vagueness but I don't have good test installs at present )

in the "Zoints SEO" plugin at parse_templates (on line #1),
originally (Zoints SEO v 2.2.2) it should be

PHP Code:

if ($vbulletin->options['zointsseo_on'] AND $vbulletin->options['zointsseo_rewrite_urls'] AND VB_AREA == 'Forum' AND !defined('VBA_PORTAL')) 


change VBA_PORTAL to VBA_SCRIPT,
ie REPLACE line#1 with

PHP Code:

if ($vbulletin->options['zointsseo_on'] AND $vbulletin->options['zointsseo_rewrite_urls'] AND VB_AREA == 'Forum' AND !defined('VBA_SCRIPT')) 


this should prevent the <base href=""> tag being added to the header which I think was the problem.


Again, apologies for the lack of testing of this before offering it as a possible solution.

Seems to work fine. But there are to much other Bugs in this Hack. It is still absolutely unusable and brings more Problems than it is worth.

Example - forum/index.php is not longer active in navbar if you use vBa at forum/cmps_index.php and if you use a DirectoryIndex to forum/cmps_index.php. It rewrits to forum/ and you still go to Portal and not to the Forum.

[M0rGu3]

Originally Posted by redlabour

Example - forum/index.php is not longer active in navbar if you use vBa at forum/cmps_index.php and if you use a DirectoryIndex to forum/cmps_index.php. It rewrits to forum/ and you still go to Portal and not to the Forum.

You can turn this off... Set "correct links to index.php" on off (I'm not sure about the title, in german it's "Links zu index.php korrigieren" - solltest du also finden redlabour )

[mpage]

poop, Im a bit stck in the mud. after installing i get:

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:

### INSERT QUERY GENERATED BY fetch_query_sql() ###
INSERT INTO plugin
(`active`, `executionorder`, `title`, `hookname`, `phpcode`, `product`)
VALUES
('1', '5', 'Zoints SEO', 'archive_complete', 'if ($vbulletin->options[\'zointsseo_on\'])\r\n{\r\n $output .= zseo_archive_ad(\'g_foot1\');\r\n $output .= \"
$vbphrase[vbulletin_copyright]
\";\r\n $output .= zseo_archive_ad(\'g_foot2\');\r\n $output .= \"\";\r\n if (defined(\'NOSHUTDOWNFUNC\'))\r\n {\r\n exec_shut_down();\r\n }\r\n echo $output;\r\n exit;\r\n}', 'zointsseo');

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'executionorder' in 'field list'

could this be due to a non compatible MySQL version, i think my servers use quite an out of date MySQL

anyone know, or seen similar?