Integration with vBulletin - Zoints Thread Tags - GREAT for SEO

Demo:

http://network.zoints.com/tags

If you choose to send tags to Zoints (optional) you can see what we do with them and how we send you traffic and nice inbound links: http://zoints.com

A great article on the importance of tagging can be read here.

The Zoints Thread Tags System will improve forum side search, SEO, and traffic for forums that choose to utilize it. And in my opinion, it's just plain cool

When a member creates a new thread, they can now input a series of "tags". Tags are simply keywords that describe the thread.



If you then go to your-forum.com/tags you will be presented with what is called a "tag cloud". The more times a tag is used, the larger the text grows. As you can see, the tags are also searchable.



Clicking on one of the tags in the cloud then lists all of the threads that are tagged with that particular keyword. The default option lists tags in a forumdisplay format. There is an option in the admincp to use a simple format.



Clicking on the thread title of one of the above threads then takes you to the thread. If you have the option on, the tags the thread are tagged with are also listed above the thread. Clicking one of those tags takes you to all the threads on the forum tagged with the same tag. Search engine spiders are going to have a field day with this



The thread starter and moderation staff have a slightly different view which allows for administration of tags:



The forum's tags are also searchable via the search dropdown. The advanced search option allows for a variety of additional criteria to be seached for. Your members create a whole new (and highly efficient) forum search engine!



If you have the option on in the admincp and register your forum, once every hour, your tagged threads in publically viewable forums are linked via the corresponding interest tag on the Zoints Forum Network. For example, if you go to http://zoints.com/tag/children you will see what is pictured below. Not only is this a great relevant inbound link for SEO, but you will get traffic from Zoints direct to these threads!

Another example of this in action: http://zoints.com/tag/music




The admincp options

















Official support for this modification will be at http://network.zoints.com in this forum.


Change log:
2008/05/01 - 1.2.3
* vBulletin CSRF Protocol Compatible
2007/12/24 - 1.2.2
* Security patch

2006/10/24 - 1.2.1
* Bugfix: breaking inline moderation when tag cloud below posts
* Bugfix: ajax input not working when tag cloud below posts
* Bugfix: seo hook effective for "results as threads" option
* Bugfix: Autogenerated tags have "quot" removed
* Bugfix: Automated template edit screwing up styles
* Improved instructions for manual template edits

2006/10/19 - 1.2.0
* Option to display results as threads
* Advanced search page
* Popular tag cloud pagination
* Popular tags displayed in forums
* Option to display tags in showthread at the top/bottom
* Fix for vbadvanced products navbar links
* Other minor fixes and tweaks

2006/10/02 - 1.1.2
* Bugfix: Foreign language characters in thread description
* Bugfix: Commas showing up when removing first tag in showthread via ajax
* Removing some redundancy in the tags AJAX removal

2006/09/30 - 1.1.1
* Bugfix: Preventing all HTML from being parsed inside tag descriptions

2006/09/30 - 1.1.0
* Adding and deleting tags from showthread via AJAX
* Mass-deleting single tags from entire cloud for admins
* Automatically generate tags for older threads (with option to show or hide on main cloud)
* Automatically stripping out tiny (2 or less characters) tags

2006/09/28 - 1.0.8
* Minor bugfix

2006/09/28 - 1.0.7
* Bugfix for required tagging

2006/09/28 - 1.0.6
* Character replacements
* Tag limit per thread
* Option to require tags for a thread
* Bugfix where stopwords may not have worked properly
* Bugfix for vBSEO / main cloud not showing up

2006/09/xx - 1.0.5
* Unreleased dev build

2006/09/23 - 1.0.4
* Ability to add multiple tags via showthread.php
* Ability to exclude certain forums from utilizing tags
* Addition of custom hook for developers to change thread urls

2006/09/21 - 1.0.3
* Ability to add and remove tags from showthread.php
* Bugfix for older versions of mysql

2006/09/21 - 1.0.2
* Small bugfix

2006/09/20 - 1.0.1
* Showing tags list on showthread.php

2006/09/20 - 1.0.0
* Initial release

[jw00dy]

Yes, I but I didn't know where that was, so it was still very helpful.

[Zoints]

For those of you who use vbseo sitemap software, Code Monkey over at vBModder was kind enough to write an addon so the tags are added. You can get it here.

[Make Money?]

I just noticed that inputting say, 3 tag catagories in the tag search box - will not call up all threads with those tags.

Is that right?

That doesnt seem like full tag functionality to me.. (like you can do on You Tube for instance, search for a selection of tags like "rolling stones' 'angie' 'live') :up:

Have I misunderstood how that tag search works or is this a limitation of the existing software, or is my Zoints SEO not functioning fully?

Please let me know..

Thanks in advance.. :up:

[johnstires]

This hack is great. I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I get it to accept capitalized letters (i.e. Zoints instead of zoints)?

2. How do I get it to accept 2 words separated by a slash? For example if I put "books/audio/video" it makes it "booksaudiovideo"

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by Make Money?

I just noticed that inputting say, 3 tag catagories in the tag search box - will not call up all threads with those tags.

Do you mean if you search for three different tags such as: cars, food, cheese ?

Or do you mean if you search for a three letter tag such as "internet relay chat"?

[Zoints]

Originally Posted by johnstires

This hack is great. I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I get it to accept capitalized letters (i.e. Zoints instead of zoints)?

2. How do I get it to accept 2 words separated by a slash? For example if I put "books/audio/video" it makes it "booksaudiovideo"

1. You can't. I'll talk to an engineer and see how feasible that would be to add though.

2. You can't otherwise the tag url would break and cause all kinds of problems. We have to strip out a lot of special characters.

[Mark Raven]

I would also really like to have my tag cloud on forumhome. I don't suppose anyone's come up with a simple way to do that, apart from waiting for the next release?

[johnstires]

Originally Posted by DChapman

1. You can't. I'll talk to an engineer and see how feasible that would be to add though.

2. You can't otherwise the tag url would break and cause all kinds of problems. We have to strip out a lot of special characters.

So how do I write something like books/audio/video?

Also how do I make it so I can add words that are longer than 20 characters. There must be something in the code or table that allows me to expand this.

[kafi]

what we all need and is not in current verson is:

- search thread by more than one tag
- have more tag categories per forum(groups) basis
- have better special charset option (for forein languages)

[s25]

I think the main thing which needs to be added is a scan through the threads where it picks most commonly used words so as to get more tags... Otherwise I do love this mod oh so much!