phpBB Search Engine Optimization - Sessions, static ( SEO )

I edited the category hierarchy succesfully.

PM me for the code ( i don't want to mess this thread up :wink: )
Grtz

I got a parse error with this line:

if ( count($forum_moderators[$forum_id]) > 0 ) and (!$userdata['session_logged_in'])

That line is in index.php (if you haven't installed the hierarchy).
It's should be commented out and should look like this:



If it's with the hierarchy, pm me or contact me on msn because it would probably confuse people if i posted that here and i don't want to hijack Craven's thread :wink:

Grtz

kraven gave me this:

if ( count($forum_moderators[$forum_id]) > 0 ) and (!$userdata['session_logged_in']) {
$l_moderators = ( count($forum_moderators[$forum_id]) == 1 ) ? $lang['Moderator'] : $lang['Moderators'];
$moderator_list = implode(', ', $forum_moderators[$forum_id]);
}
else
{
$l_moderators = ' ';
$moderator_list = ' ';
}

of which when I used that in my index.php it said that the first line had a parse error. the line that I bolded.

Sorry, this:



Should be:



If that doesn't work let me know.

sorry, still didn't work, I got a parse error on the same line

Sorry, really dumb mistakes, this should work:

hehe, no problem, I didn't catch it either. I'll try it out later.

So, about the way seo works, I noticed your home page has a link to all your forums, this makes it easier for the spiders? Since that's the first page for your site, does that mean that they don't really have to go to root/forum since they have all the links they need on the first page?

It definitely helps the spiders, thing is, the more links to a particular page there are the more relevant that page looks to search engines.

It also helps because some spiders avoid the forum pages, but eat up the CMS pages.

About the subforums, is it like another folder to the crawlers?
Like yoursite/phpBB2/index.php as the phpbb files are in their own folder this would also affect the behaviour of the crawlers?

So when you've got 1 subforum it would look like something like this;
sitename/phpBB2/subforum/index.php?

My phpbb files aren't in a folder but i was just curious about the behaviour of the crawlers.
Grtz

Most search engines consider the amount of links needed to reach the content much more than the level of sub folders.

Sub folders have limited influence on the spiders and it's really the link flow that makes the biggest difference.

Thing is, since sub folders almost always influence link flow people confuse it.

The real issue is link flow, sub folders affect the link flow* but are not a big issue by themselves.

* Sub folders affect link flow because of things like this.

Visitor lands on the root page, if the site is on a lower sub directory they will most likely have to follow a link to get there. So that is making an additional step in the link flow.

But the difference between a one-link jump to the content in a sub folder or a one-link jump to the content of a sub-sub-folder is not that big.

So the key is in minimizing the link jumps, and not necessarily the folder structure (even though the folders can have an influence on your link flow).

so, you're cms solutions on your index bypasses that problem becaue it makes all forums visible from the beginning?

btw, the code worked. as a guest I don't see any moderators, when logged in I do =)

I used submit express to analyze how many links you get and I saw a lot of interesting things. like a lot of the pages that are index have descriptions like "user not logged in, forum -> yadayada" stuff that doesn't say what that page actually is. I was just curious if you plan ot address this and how? Also, should the search engines crawl search.php?

Please understand that I am in know way criticizing your work, I think it's awesome, I'm just curious about these issues and what they mean, in general, for a phpbb site.

and just out of curiousity, again, is it possible for a search engine such as google, to index all your topics???

phpBB doesn't use meta tags like keyword and description. Untill a good solution is made for dynamic tags webmasters should just hardcode the meta tags in.

Here I haven't yet done so because the topics are so varied that it's pointess to hardcode meta tags.

Now as to what you see in the search engine descriptions that is related to teh query you type.

So of you are queryin terms like "able2know" you will see descriptions on, say, Google that will probably be closer to menu and footer text than content text.

But if you query other content related terms the descriptions should should reflect that.

One thing to remember is that the viewtopic.php page is really the page that will bring the search traffic. Most of teh other pages are optimized to better lead spiders to those pages.

And to answer your last question, yes, it's possible for Google to index all the topics here. But they probably won't at their present harvesting levels.

Book marking

so pages with links to actual topics are good?

By dynamic meta tags what do you mean? Database driven?

By dynamic I mean relevant to the actual page.

For example, on this site one general meta tag wouldn't really help. As there is no general topic.

A site about widgets can simply put in meta tags about widgets but this site would need meta tags specific to the variosu topics.

So yeah, it'd be database driven, and based on the content of the topic.

But this is something I won't be doing till phpBB2.2.0 comes out.

I installed the SOE changes.
My home page now only says "Index" as the page title.
How can I change it to be more descriptive?
Thanks.

timdog,

You can do the following:

Open lang_main.php

FIND



Replace with

Thanks Craven.
Much appreciated!

/Timdog
Edit (Moderator): Link removed. Do not post your links.