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

[Porfiry]

I see that I'm digging up an old thread, but I have a solution to the problem discussed.

The answer is rewriting!

RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/thread\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]

RewriteRule ^[ft]([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/(.+)$ /$3 [L]

I've modified the first 2 rules a bit to make things easier. The 3rd rule simply changes any URL like "/f1/s1/newreply.php" that would normally cause a problem and just rewrites it to "/newreply.php". This should also work for any images. No need to muck with templates.

[eva2000]

Originally posted by porfiry
I see that I'm digging up an old thread, but I have a solution to the problem discussed.

The answer is rewriting!

RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/thread\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]

RewriteRule ^[ft]([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/(.+)$ /$3 [L]

I've modified the first 2 rules a bit to make things easier. The 3rd rule simply changes any URL like "/f1/s1/newreply.php" that sould normally cause a problem and just rewrites it to "/newreply.php". This should also work for any images. No need to muck with templates.

where were you when i added this hack

what i did for my subsequent styles was create replacement variables for form and other urls and it works but i'll try your method when an upgrade to the next release might force me to revert too many templates

[VirtueTech]

Eva check your PM's please

[fastforward]

Like eva2000, I also solved it the hard way

Although the form problems were happening in both IE and Netscape, Netscape also had a lot of other problems with normal links. Does this method work with Netscape?

I'll try it when 2.02 is released

[steven]

Originally posted by porfiry
I see that I'm digging up an old thread, but I have a solution to the problem discussed.

The answer is rewriting!

RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/thread\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]

RewriteRule ^[ft]([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/(.+)$ /$3 [L]

I've modified the first 2 rules a bit to make things easier. The 3rd rule simply changes any URL like "/f1/s1/newreply.php" that sould normally cause a problem and just rewrites it to "/newreply.php". This should also work for any images. No need to muck with templates.

Sorry to bring up an old thread again, but I would like to use this hack on my board and had a couple of questions. I was wondering how I would change the above code to reflect my forums directory which is not run as root, but is run as http://www.mydomain.com/forums

Any Help is greatly appreciated.
Steven

Originally posted by steven
I was wondering how I would change the above code to reflect my forums directory which is not run as root, but is run as http://www.mydomain.com/forums

Any Help is greatly appreciated.
Steven

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...210#post114210

Fantastic hack! But I have some problems:

Okay, a.m. fastforward's hint works for me,
but I have problems with rewriting in general as it seems.

This is my .htaccess on Apache 1.3.20 placed in the root dir.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^forum/f([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^forum/t([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/thread\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^forum/[ft]([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/(.+)$ /$3 [L]

# Testing
RewriteRule ^forum/foo/(.*)$ /bar/index.html [R]

Test:

http://mcseboard.de/forum/foo/

is rewritten to

http://mcseboard.de/bar/index.html


So, rewrites seem to work - just try the link.
But my board behaves as usual making no notice of the rules as it seems.
What's going wrong here?

Thanks for any hint,
-Tom

P.S.: I don't have access to httpd.conf or the RewriteLog if there is...

[auto]

This is what i have in my .htaccess in the root directory:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^vbulletin/f([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^vbulletin/t([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/thread\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^vbulletin/[ft]([0-9]+)/s([^/]*)/(.+)$ /$3 [L]

and the rule does not appear to work

My vB is here: http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/index.php

any help would be appreciated.

Hi,

does rewriting work in general?

Try to test it with something like
RewriteRule ^vbulletin/foo/(.*)$ /bar/index.html [R]

Enter http://yourdomain/vbulletin/foo/

Rewriting works for me in general, but the board doesn't seem
to be affected...
-Tom

[auto]

RewriteRule ^vbulletin/foo/(.*)$ /index.php [R]

that works,
when you go to http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/foo/
it directs you to the index page.

Then we seem to have the same problem...

[auto]

Sure does look like it.

[fastforward]

This may or may not help. It will probably confuse things even more

Here's what I have in my httpd.conf:

RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)/?$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^/t([0-9]+)\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1 [L]

I dispensed with the session tag as it wasn't really helping the spiders becaue the number would change each time anyway. I also edited all my templates to sort out the drop-down problems (I did this before I read porfiry's post).

In your problem examples I notice you don't start the url with a slash. You might want to try that. You never know.

Hi fastforward,

thanks for answering, I tried that, but it didn't seem to work

Are these the only two line regarding rewrite in your conf?
Where is the one which builds the /f1/... or /fx/...?

I really would like to sort it out since this is one of the most useful hack for vB ever - maybe even for php-based sites in general.

Thanks,
-Tom

[eva2000]

Originally posted by fastforward
This may or may not help. It will probably confuse things even more

Here's what I have in my httpd.conf:

RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)/?$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^/t([0-9]+)\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1 [L]

I dispensed with the session tag as it wasn't really helping the spiders becaue the number would change each time anyway. I also edited all my templates to sort out the drop-down problems (I did this before I read porfiry's post).

In your problem examples I notice you don't start the url with a slash. You might want to try that. You never know.

what do i need to do to remove the session tag but still have this format

http://animeboards.com/f38/s
http://animeboards.com/t20418/s.html

?

currently i have in my httpd.conf

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)/s([^/]+?)$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^/t([0-9]+)/s([^/]+?)\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^/s([^/])+?/$ /index.php?s=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^/html/.* /html/index.php [L]

thanks