Search Engine Friendly URL's - Indexable - Etc.

[memobug]

This page explains it better than I could:

http://designforcommunity.com/conversations/messages.pl/showThread?id=71



Many of the online community sites on the Net aren't getting their discussion posts indexed by the search engines. Thus millions of discussion posts end up being part of the "Invisible Web". Thankfully, this is a solvable problem. Simply remove all "stop characters" from the URLs (question marks, ampersands, equals signs, cgi-bin, etc.) and you'll find search engines such as Google will start indexing those pages. There are a number of ways of "rewriting" your URLs...

Regards,

Matt

[Chen]

http://beta.vbulletin.com/vb3/archive/index.php/

[Destee]

I think the threads need to be indexable by (most major) search engines. It seems a shame that a forum must be hacked in order to make the thousands, millions, billions of vBulletin generated threads easily self promote-able (is that a word?). Gossamer-Threads' threads can all be found doing most any search, without hacking. I recognize they have a different product and all ... but hey ... you are vB! :)

Both the site owner and vBulletin are losing out. What good are all your posts if no one can find them on Google? Well ... they are still some good, but could be worth a lot more.

I still have yet to get either of the two hacks I've seen on vb.org to work for me (operator error I'm sure). I'd love to see this a part of the software if possible.

Thanks for listening.

Destee

[Chen]

Merged the two threads. :)

[Destee]

Thanks FireFly! :)

I had just posted this ... and refreshed the page only to find that you (vB) had already considered this!

Well ... just like I said ... you are vB ... and while much is expected ... much is delivered!

Thank You.

Destee

[Destee]

Just a note for anyone who cares .... hehehe ... I am soooo happy !!!! :)

While I said earlier that I could not get the 2 vb hacks to work regarding this topic ... I'd actually only tried one ... and just assumed the other would be as unsuccessful ... well ... I just installed Overgrow's vbSpiderFriend - Search Engine Friendliness (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15628) ... and hey ... search engine friendly URL's are no longer an issue for me ... so please wonderful vB Team ... take your time releasing vB3 !!!!! :)

Destee

[Techguy1]

Neat :D

[samtha25]

I'm thoroughly confused. The test board still shows question marks in the URLs. Are they going away?

[Wayne Luke]

Originally posted by samtha25
I'm thoroughly confused. The test board still shows question marks in the URLs. Are they going away?

Not that I know of.. They are probably referring to the "Archive" link at the bottom of the page.

[tubedogg]

Hmm...I don't see any question marks in this URL?

http://beta.vbulletin.com/vb3/archive/index.php/t-383

[samtha25]

So the archive is complete copy of all posts maintained to provide links without question marks? Is it not possible to just eliminate the question marks from the URLs? URLs with question marks no longer conform to the latest W3C standards. From some discussions here in the past, I had the impression that the question marks would be going away in vB3.

[tubedogg]

Question marks no longer conform to W3C standards? Are you sure you aren't thinking of ampersands (which are not going away, BTW)?

If you get rid of question marks, there are no more GET form actions.

[samtha25]

I must have dreamed it.

[filburt1]

Originally posted by FireFly
http://beta.vbulletin.com/vb3/archive/index.php/

The BB Codes don't parse ya know: http://beta.vbulletin.com/vb3/archive/index.php/t-383

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Destee
Just a note for anyone who cares .... hehehe ... I am soooo happy !!!! :)

While I said earlier that I could not get the 2 vb hacks to work regarding this topic ... I'd actually only tried one ... and just assumed the other would be as unsuccessful ... well ... I just installed Overgrow's vbSpiderFriend - Search Engine Friendliness (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15628) ... and hey ... search engine friendly URL's are no longer an issue for me ... so please wonderful vB Team ... take your time releasing vB3 !!!!! :)

Destee overgrow's hack can expose private forums if you input the private forum's forumid - just thought you should know

[Destee]

Thank you Eva ... I think he (and I) covered this in his index.php by noting the private forums as follows:

$privateForums="|4|6|8|12|"; // Hidden forumids, enclosed by | pipes

None of my private forums seem to be showing up on the archive ... http://destee.com/forums/archive.

Is there more that needs to be done Eva ... am I still vulnerable?

You're the best ... thank you!

:)

Destee

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Destee
Thank you Eva ... I think he (and I) covered this in his index.php by noting the private forums as follows:

$privateForums="|4|6|8|12|"; // Hidden forumids, enclosed by | pipes

None of my private forums seem to be showing up on the archive ... http://destee.com/forums/archive.

Is there more that needs to be done Eva ... am I still vulnerable?

You're the best ... thank you!

:)

Destee if you manually type in private forumid it shows up i.e. http://destee.com/forums/archive/4

[Destee]

Oh Gosh Eva ... I'm sorry ... I changed the forumid's above because I didn't want everyone to see how raggedy my forum has come to be ... so many different forumids and stuff, strewn every which way ... please forgive me for that and thank you for your help ... my private forums are as follows ...

http://destee.com/forums/archive/41
http://destee.com/forums/archive/94
http://destee.com/forums/archive/77
http://destee.com/forums/archive/78
http://destee.com/forums/archive/79
http://destee.com/forums/archive/16
http://destee.com/forums/archive/38
http://destee.com/forums/archive/34

None of which are accessible. At first I was a bit alarmed that I could even reach the URL's above, but after thoroughly checking each one, it appears that on the pages displayed for those URL's ... the forumid that is actually displayed is forumid1 ... (just run your mouse over any of the week links and you'll see they are all linked to forumid1 ... which is not private). Perhaps this was Overgrow's way of handling this part <??>.

Again ... you really are the best Eva ... going the extra mile not only to support ... but to protect as well ... Thank You!

Apologizing to everyone for having my "hack support" provided here. If you think I still have reason to be concerned Eva, please let me know and I can move this discussion to vb.org in the proper thread.

By the way Eva ... aren't you using this hack anymore? I noticed that you were one of the first to add it, according to that 999 page discussion at vb.org! :)

Destee

[eva2000]

ah i see.. i removed my install because it showed my private forum contents when i had it installed

either way vB 3 has the same function anyway :)

[Destee]

Okay Eva. Thanks again for looking out for me. Even though it appears that my private forums may in fact, be private ... I'm now nervous that those private sex education classes I've been holding in my private forums may make their way to Google ... Oh Gosh ... if they do ... I'll be changing my username, domain, and vBulletin license information! ;)

Destee

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Destee
Okay Eva. Thanks again for looking out for me. Even though it appears that my private forums may in fact, be private ... I'm now nervous that those private sex education classes I've been holding in my private forums may make their way to Google ... Oh Gosh ... if they do ... I'll be changing my username, domain, and vBulletin license information! ;)

Destee you don't have to worry about that as google will only index what is on a web page (and linked to from other pages) - it can't index pages which need manually typing in the private forumid in the browser

[Destee]

Thanks Again Eva ... (and for the record, I was just kidding about the private sex classes ... <eeek>... just imagining extreme situations ... sorry).

:)

Destee

[Christophe_O]

vBSpiderFriend Compatible with Frames?

:eek: :cool: :eek: Wow, this is powerful stuff---so logical, even I almost can understand it..... my brain is too small for all the details, but let's see if I've got this much right so far....

Long have I used forums, but only in one or two forums did my many messages show up on searches---when it did, I even could search my name and "find myself"---that was cool. And as a site owner, imagine the power of hundreds of messages cataloged on major search engines. Sometimes I did searches myself and ended up in forums---I wondered why those forums showed and not others---now I know.

Also, it seems to me that the fact that vBSpiderFriend is a "searchable index" and NOT a "URL-question-mark-removal" has 2 special implications:

1. In any case, this actually is making a special "search-friendly" version of your forum----much better than simply making your forum seachable.

2. I suspect this can be used even with vB's in frames. (?) Well, the searchable version will not be framed---but it will work just the same----and in the header, you can put a banner or link to your framed version. (Maybe?)

I.e., whether your vB is framed or not framed---in either case, this "search version" is not the real forum. It is just an introduction---and when a visitor returns, you want them to find the real forum. So in either case, there must be some kind of switch-over process.

Well, frames are extremely unpopular today, but I am giving it a try. One reason frames are taboo is they are not search engine friendly. Well, vB Spider Friend overcomes this, I think.

I am a bit of a newbie so someone please tell me, am I right about all this?

Also, if anyone has any "better" suggestion for "bringing visitors into the frame" other than simply "a link at the top of the page..." I would be glad to hear it... Thank you.