Joe Belmaati wrote:As for getting this mod validated, my personal belief is that this mod should be part of the standard phpBB distribution (along with the extreme styles mod), perhaps with an option to turn mod_rewrite off in the ACP for people without mod_rewrite installed on their server.
Again, before I had it installed the bots would sniff around the front door, and then leave.
The extreme styles mod, if it's the one I have in mind, will be aped somewhat by the phpBB group. They have indicated improvements on their templating engine and probably plan to address speed concerns. I just don't know what extent they will be able to improve the speed.
As to SEO, they plan to incorporate a different approach to it with 2.2.X, it's not that bad but IMO is not optimal.
Basically, they will include support for session control for specific user agents.
So you would be able to determine that user agent x (e.g. the Googlebot) will be able to browse without URL sessions.
I dislike the approach, as it requires spiders to be targeted and not a blanket invidation to spiders that I currently favor.
In the future spiders may stop using distinctive agent names to combat cloaking, and rely exclusively on robot.txt for their rules to obey.
If that kind of thing happens, then the method phpBB decides to use will no longer work.
Furthermore, the addressing of sessions, while important, is not as comprehensive a solution as I would like.
The good news is that in my new job (started yesterday) I will be working with SEO full time, and fortunately the company wants me to develop a user-community in addition to all the other sites.
I'll choose phpBB, of course, and will then have some time to improve my mods, and publish them.