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

[GameCrash]

Originally posted by TheComputerGuy
where can I find the htaccess

Don't forget the dot... it must be called .htaccess

[Thomas P]

Hi GameCrash!

have you tried that hack on d)f?
Btw: I'm with d)f now, too. Great support and nice features.
cu,
-Tom

[GameCrash]

Sorry, D)F does not support mod_rewrite. So if you try to turn the RewriteEngine to on you will get an error 500, sorry

[Thomas P]

Originally posted by GameCrash
Sorry, D)F does not support mod_rewrite. So if you try to turn the RewriteEngine to on you will get an error 500, sorry

I have the answer from d)f support that mod_rewrite is enabled.
The following works for example:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /test/
RewriteRule   ^(.+)  http://www.mcseboard.de/$1  [R,L]

create a directory named "test" and put the above into an .htaccess into the dir. test to try that - it works!
But not all from fastforwards samples, so that's why I wonder...
-Tom

[GameCrash]

Well... maybe they have enabled it now as so many people have asked for it - the last time I asked they said it's disabled...

[Thomas P]

I see, yeah could be...
Still couldn't get it working properly.
Do you have any plans to try that?
I'll play around the next days with it.
cu,
-Tom

[GameCrash]

No, I won't as I will change my hoster the next days (I hope). I will go to a gamesite hoster - it's cheaper for me

[Thomas P]

May I ask which one?

[GameCrash]

No

And I don't think we should discuss this in this thread any more

[steven]

So does anyone have a final version of this hack, as I would really like to use it on my site via an .htaccess file.