Google and Forum appz

[kusadasi-guy]

Are forum applications safe for our PRs? And how can we use Forum Applications more efficiently, for example HTML should ON/OFF?

what else?

[seo guy]

You are using a phpbb forum so to make your forum more seach engine friendly use mod_rewrite. You can read about it here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html

As for html on or off, I prefer to leave it on so links can stay live but it does leak a very small portion of PR out of the system and also attracts link spammers so all depends on how vehemently you are going to moderate.

:vehemently is not a word I just like it, I have decided it means "well" lol

[SEO studio]

SEO guy, what does "mod_rewrite" mean for sites that are hosted on windows platforms?

Since we are hosting our own forum, it never occurred to me search engines could index the postings.
They can probably index the static forum links, but not the actual postings which are dynamic. Any thoughts?

[digitalpoint]

mod_rewrite is a function of Apache, so unless you are running Apache on your Windows server, you aren't going to be able to use it. Search engines (specifically Google) can spider and index dynamic URLs, as long as you keep "id=" out of the URL and you are not using sessions within the URLs. Ideally no more than 2 or 3 different fields/parameters within your URLs.

- Shawn

[kusadasi-guy]

in my server, Apache isint installed ( host representetive said this), so what if i install VBulletin? is Vbulletin search engine friendly withour any Apache modification? :(

[morgan]

VBulletin 3 has a search engine friendly archive of all posts so yes you will not have to hack or mod the script at all. To see what it looks like go down to the bottom of the forum and click the "archive" button.

As for mod-rewrite on a windows server there is an application call isapi that has a very similar application http://www.isapirewrite.com/ for more info

[kusadasi-guy]

Thanks for the greatly useful URL Morgan, i think seo-guy.com's forums will be one of the best SEO forum soon.

Anyway, i am bringing a mod file (for phpBB) , just replace it with current /includes/sessions.php and it will remove all the sid in URLs.
in action: http://www.kusadasi.biz/forum


Morgan, can u examine my forum and tell me my phpBB is okey now for Search Engines, if so, forum members easly use the modification which is below.

the mod file : http://www.kusadasi.biz/forum/includes/sessions.txt
download and just change the file to sessions.php and upload to .../phpBB-forum-name/includes/

Cheers

[SEO studio]

kusadasi-guy, thanks a bunch for the session script, I will give it a try on our own forum.

Just out of curiosity what are the advantages VBulletin offers over phpBB?

[kusadasi-guy]

>>Just out of curiosity what are the advantages VBulletin offers over phpBB?

Nothin so much! VBullettin is more beauty lookin and some more additional features. in my opinion they are all same.

[digitalpoint]

vBulletin 2.x wasn't worth the price compared to phpBB, but 3.0 is (in my opinion). There are tons of minor things that are better than phpBB, but they all add up... handles daylight savings time, doesn't require modding to make it search engine friendly, signatures work even when doing a quick reply, email notifications include the message within the email, main forum view shows newest thread (not just poster), thread views within forums show (by the icon) threads you have already participated in, etc, etc, etc... For back-end stuff it's more configurable, faster and scales better than phpBB.

- Shawn

[Pyrrhonist]

SEO Studio,

One of the biggest things that I've found vBulletin helped with was support when installing it. This forum was based on phpBB last week, and it only took us a day to switch over... vBulletin provides comprehensive resources for both installation and migrating from various different bulletin boards over to it.

The admin area is also a lot better. if you go to the vBulletin homepage, they have a demo of the admin area that you can browse through.

If you haven't noticed, we've got a selection of skins available, and you can jump between regular view and a wide view on the fly by using the drop down menu at the bottom of the screen.

[kusadasi-guy]

:) Bob, but phpBB is free and thats why i love it
PhpBB must be supported by IT community

And, i havent tested and examined the VB but phpBB is really easy to modificate and re-design the interface.

[digitalpoint]

vBulletin is just as easy to modify (code-wise), and for style/templates it's 10x easier... it even comes with a full graphics developer kit with layered photoshop files for all default images... http://www.vbulletin.com/manual/graphics.html

- Shawn

[SEO studio]

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions.
The vBulletin pricing is not outrageous for the features they are offering. The switch would be fairly seamless if we decided to go ahead, unfortunately we are all windows based, including MS SQL server which vBulletin does not support, at least that’s what I had found without digging too deep into their support documentation. I am pretty sure we have access to MySQL if we decide to go ahead.
The quick style chooser is great, thanks for the tip.

[kusadasi-guy]

OKey DigitalPoint, firstly i decided to start with PhpBB, then if i decided to continue with VBulletin, can i migrate from PHPBB to VBulletin with my mysql database?

firstly i should see the potential to invest to VBulletin.

And DigitalPoint, how about html design? Phpbb's html design is very simple, i can configure and manage easly, how about VBulletin?

[Pyrrhonist]

Well... if you're not using any MS specific products in your hosting, you could switch to a Linux based web hosting company, and use the money you saved from that to pay for vBulletin. And everyone's happy.

[kusadasi-guy]

i dont know php and i love my basic ASP
i know that Win2k3 is good enough for both VB and PhpBB
What about waitin Vbulletin.NET ;) ?

Hey Bob, why u dont want to learn asp.NET and write a forum application?

[Pyrrhonist]

LOL

I'm a php guy, and honestly don't know a thing about .NET (although I am learning).
If I made a forum app, I can guarantee you it wouldn't be free.

Oh yeah, if you need some help making your forum search engine friendly, I'll make a new thread specifically for that. It's something I was planning on doing but it seems out of place considering this board is on vBulletin now.

[Pyrrhonist]

Ok, I've made a new topic in the Coding and Programming forum under PHP in regards to optimizing phpBB. It really just walks through exactly how to do it.

Hopefully it'll help.

http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/showthread.php?t=119

[seo guy]

Thanks Bob Good work :-)

[eCommando]

Thanks for that link. They have an interesting application on their site called linkfreeze.


[QUOTE=morgan]
As for mod-rewrite on a windows server there is an application call isapi [/QUOTE]

[eCommando]

Do you need to use mod_rewrite on vBulletin to make it search engine friendly?
What if I am using a Windows server that supports PHP and MySQL? I don't have isapi_rewrite.

[Pyrrhonist]

vBulletin comes out of the box search engine friendly. I've been working with vBulletin now for almost 4 months, and I'll never go back to phpBB. vBulletin gives you so many more options for customization and maintenance that it's worth the extra bit of money, IMO.

[jlknauff]

Just my .02 but I just put a board called eblah on my site and it works great-don't know if the search engines see it, it is in cgi. Can't beat the price though, it was free and I have always gotten any questions answered with in an hour or so.

On the html thing, from what I have read (I could be wrong) even if the html is off the url should appear the same to the engines. Does anyone know the real answer to this?