Administrative and Maintenance Tools - vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator

vBulletin Google Sitemaps by vBSEO v.2.5 - vBulletin 3.7.x
Download vB 3.8.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.6.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.5.x Compatible Version Here
Download vB 3.0.x Compatible Version Here

Note: Version 2.5 replaces all previous versions of the vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator, and now includes support for all the new URL types in vBulletin 3.8.x.

Overview
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Providing Google, Yahoo, Ask sitemaps is an essential step towards improving your forums.

The "vBSEO Google Sitemaps" plugin provides a solution that allows your forum to be indexed by the Google (and also Yahoo and Ask) search engines faster, more completely, more effectively, and with less bandwidth consumption.

The ultimate goal is to help you achieve more web traffic for your forum.

Originally Posted by Google's Description of GSM

https://services.google.com/inquiry/publishertools?hl=en_US
Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your site?s representation in the Google index. It's a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google. You get a smarter crawl because you can provide Google with specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently it changes.

Note: This plugin is fully compliant with vBSEO 3.x version. The current version is vBSEO 3.2. However, if you are running vBSEO, please upgrade to vBSEO 3.2 or greater before installing.

Compatibility
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Fully compatible with:

• vBulletin 3.0.x, 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x and 3.8.x
• vBulletin Blogs 1.0.x and 2.0.x *Optional
• vBSEO 2.x, 3.x *Optional

What does it do?
============================

• Auto-generates a Google XML sitemap for all of your specified forum URL types (including vBulletin Blog URLs).
• Auto-generates a Yahoo text sitemap for all of your specified forum URL types.
• Auto-notifies Google when a new sitemap is generated.
• Automatically sends you a summary of the sitemap generation via email each time it is created.
• Includes only publicly accessible forums and threads.
• Allows Google/Yahoo to find all of your forum URLs without having to spider the forum to find the links.
• Allows Google/Yahoo to find your forum URLs without having to account for query string and/or session ID information.
• Allows Google to give precedence to crawling your higher priority forum pages.
• Allows Google to give precedence to crawling your forum pages that change more frequently.
• Allows you to conserve bandwidth by more efficiently facilitating the crawling processes for GoogleBot and Yahoo Slurp.
• Is 100% compatible with the static CRUs (Content Relevant URLs) used by vBSEO-enabled forums.

How does it work?
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Whenever it is scheduled or invoked via the URL, this plugin will generate both the Google XML formatted and the Yahoo text formatted sitemaps. If you selected "Yes" to the Google auto-notification setting, Google will be notified each time the sitemap is generated. The Yahoo sitemap must be manually submitted to http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request/.

• Google Sitemap files are gzipped
• Forum and thread pages are listed with pagination (i.e. all pages for each forums/thread are included in the sitemap)
• Maximum Priority is set for Sticky threads.
• Optimization for sitemap generation on large forums.

Automated Reporting Tool
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The vBSEO Sitemap includes a report tool, allowing you to track your progress. To access your reports enter the following URL:

http://www.example.com/forums/vbseo_sitemap/

NOTE: Replace "http://www.example.com/forums/" with the full URL to your vB forum root.


You will be required to login by providing your "Sitemap Interface Access Password" from your vBSEO Sitemap settings in:

• vBulletin Admin CP (for 3.5.x/3.6.x/3.7.x/3.8.x users) OR
• vbseo_sitemap.php configuration file (for 3.0.x users) located in the vbseo_sitemap directory in your forum root.

Once you successfully login, you will be provided with a list of 'Useful Links'. Here are the 4 main links:

Show Reports List
The 'Show Reports List' link will display a report of each time your vBSEO Sitemap generator executed, including the (1) date, (2) run time, (3) total URLs included, and (4) and change in # of URLs included from the last generation.

Each vBSEO Sitemap generation record will include a (1) "View details" and (2) "Remove record" link. The "View Details" link shows more detailed information about the sitemap generated. The "Remove record" will permanently delete the record from your reports.

Show Sitemap Downloads Log
The 'Show Sitemap Downloads Log' link will display a report of each time your vBSEO Sitemap was downloaded by either a search engine (GoogleBot or Yahoo) or by another user agent (i.e. Web browser, etc.).

The report includes the (1) date, (2) name of sitemap file downloaded, (3) Bot, (4) IP address of the downloader, and the (5) User-agent.

Each vBSEO Sitemap download record will include a "Remove record" link which will permanently delete the record from your reports.

Run Sitemap Generator
The 'Run Sitemap Generator' link will automatically regenerate your Google and Yahoo sitemaps.

Your Forums Homepage
The 'Your Forums Homepage' link is a quick link back to your forum homepage.

Additional Links
Additional links to various other related SEO resources are also included.


Click "Install"
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Please click "Install" to show your support for this script.


Installation & Configuration for vB 3.5.x, 3.6.x, 3.7.x and 3.8.x as a Plugin
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Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.


Google Webmaster Accounts
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It is NOT required for you to have a Google Webmaster account to run the vBulletin Google Sitemaps plugin. If you decide to setup an account for testing purposes you can do so here:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?sourceid=gsm&subid=us-et-about2


Copyright & Licensing

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• vBSEO Google Sitemaps plugin is copyright protected by Crawlability Inc.
• You are free to download and install this plugin on any vBulletin forum for which you hold a valid vB license.
• Unauthorized distribution of any code and/or documentation, whole or in part, included here is strictly prohibited.
• In addition, the following copyright notice must be maintained.

vBSEO(TM) ? 2005-2009 Crawlability, Inc.


Revision History
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02/22/2009 - Version 2.5 Released

NEW FEATURE: Blog tags URLs are included.
NEW FEATURE: Social Group Discussion URLs are included.
NEW FEATURE: Smart Priority applied for the following URL types

1. Show Post
2. Member Profiles
3. Forum Display
4. Poll Results
5. Blog Entries
6. Member Profile Albums
7. Social Groups
8. Social Groups Discussions
9. Social Group Pictures
10. Tags
11. Blog Tags

UPDATE: Compatible with vBulletin 3.8.x. Includes the following updated settings:

1. Priority Range - Show Post
2. Priority Range - Member Profiles
3. Priority Range - Forum Display
4. Priority Range - Poll Results
5. Priority Range - Show Thread
6. Priority Range - Blog Entries
7. Priority Range - Member Profile Albums
8. Priority Range - Social Groups
9. Priority Range - Social Group Pictures
10. Priority Range - Tags

Fix: Social Group Discussion database error is fixed.

Upgrade Instructions
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(1) Follow the installation/upgrade instructions provided in the docs/readme.html file.

(2) For versions of vBulletin 3.6.x only: Open "Schedule Manager" in the vBulletin Admin Control Panel (admincp); Remove existing scheduled task for Sitemap Generator if you have one.
Note: The new task will be automatically setup when you import the XML product file.

Other vBSEO Plugins

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• vBSEO - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization
  
• vBSEO Conditional Signatures for vBulletin

vBSEO Affiliate Program
============================

We welcome you to join the vBSEO Affiliate Program.

[iojam]

ahmedzbeda,

it should be used with vBSEO3.2.0.

arena,

what exactly is the error you get?

AzzX,

what is your sitemap URL?

[AzzX]

Thanks for replying iojam

The sitemap url in question is http://www.ozsource.org/forums/sitemap_index.xml.gz

Thanks.

[iojam]

Your sitemap looks ok, I've submitted it to Google and got no errors:

sitemap_index.xml.gz
Sitemap Index 7 minutes ago OK -- Details

[gregmlb]

Is it possible to have this tool ONLY generate the URL list for the forum (so that I can add that to the URL list for the rest of my site before I run my own sitemap-generation script)?

In other words, my site consists of two sections:
1) an informational site
2) the forum which sits in the forums directory

Whenever I add anything to my site, I add the new URL into a text file that contains all URLs of my site ... I then run a server script which then generates my google sitemap file. What I'd like to do is have this tool generate the text-only URL list for my forums section (and not generate the whole sitemap) ... I would then add that URL list to the URL list for the rest of my site, then run my sitemap-generation script. Is that possible?

[shotkey]

Originally Posted by gregmlb

Is it possible to have this tool ONLY generate the URL list for the forum (so that I can add that to the URL list for the rest of my site before I run my own sitemap-generation script)?

In other words, my site consists of two sections:
1) an informational site
2) the forum which sits in the forums directory

Whenever I add anything to my site, I add the new URL into a text file that contains all URLs of my site ... I then run a server script which then generates my google sitemap file. What I'd like to do is have this tool generate the text-only URL list for my forums section (and not generate the whole sitemap) ... I would then add that URL list to the URL list for the rest of my site, then run my sitemap-generation script. Is that possible?

That's similar to what I asked before and need an answer on as I'm not really familiar with seo tools - only my question was that the main part of the site is Joomla which has a menu link to the vbulliten forum (no bridge or integration other than the forum is a subdomain) - so the question was if you run seo (Jpromoter) on the main site does it pick up the forum too? In other words would be redundant to run this mod on the forum side or would this help?

[AzzX]

Originally Posted by iojam

Your sitemap looks ok, I've submitted it to Google and got no errors:

Thanks for looking - It is ok now - must have been an issue with google.

[realmr]

I use lighthttpd server, so should I replace the

riteRule ^((urllist|sitemap).*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]

to

url.rewrite-once = ( "^/((urllist|sitemap).*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)" => "/forums/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1" )

or do I need to add it beneath the rewrite rule in htaccess ??

[realmr]

I have installed everything. I get the following record:

I submitted and got results,
2008-09-15 05:56 2.52 s 139 - Yes Yes
but they sitemap links give me 404 error

I have uploaded lighthttpd_rewrite renamed it as .htaccess and uploaded them. I found no such files (sitemap.xml and urllist) on forum directory.

I had created manually - sitemap_index.xml.gz, sitemap_1.xml.gz

When clicked on those file after once again running sitemap generator, the files are getting downloadable and there's only a blank file while in reports it show as - 139 URLs, 26.43Kb) 26.12Kb uncompressed,

chmod permission for forum directory is - 755, data folder is 777 only the folder and not the files under it

Can I know what should be done now ?

[iojam]

gregmlb,

vBSEO Sitemap Generator has a built-in option to create text based sitemap (urllist.txt file with one URL per line).

realmr,

in case of lighttpd rewrite rules should be entered in existing lighty config file (lighttpd.conf) on your server, not in .htaccess file.

[arena]

Run Sitemap Generator error help please

 
[SECTION START] tags [4,033.4Kb mem used] [256,690s (+256,592s)]
[create sitemap index] filename: sitemap_index.xml.gz, number of sitemaps: 18 [4,040.5Kb mem used] [256,690s (+0s)]

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 10485760 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 9865885 bytes) in /home2/xxx/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_sitemap_functions.php on line 1298