Great mod, but a few questions

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

Hi,

I'm a complete newbie on here, although I am a member in quite a lot of forums. I found this completely by chance and I am amazed as I did not know that it was possible to do this with PHPBB?

Firstly I can make basic html websites but php and mysql goes way above my head and so I often get a friend to install mods etc. (paid help)

I already have a phpbb forum that is modded quite a bit and I feel that this mod could greatly help my site in the search engines. My site has over 6000 pages indexed in Google, not all these pages are from the forum as I have roughly 600+ static pages that I have made myself.

What I would like to know is can this mod be installed onto my forum and is it likely to cause any damage?

How difficult is it to install?

Are there any pitfalls that I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance

chez

HB · phpBB SEO Team Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 795

If your board is heavily modified, then any mod will be more challenging to apply as the risk of a conflict among them increases. I don't think the mods here are more difficult to apply than any other mod, but I strongly recommend a test board since failing to understand the implications could jeopardize your site's indexing.

By the way, I always recommend having a "minimally modified" version of your board available. It is helpful for testing. For example, if your phpBB is installed in /forums/, install a second copy in /forums22/. Modify the overall_header and overall_footer to match your site's look and apply styling if you wish, but otherwise leave it alone. Then you can test a mod in isolation to decide if it's worth the trouble. Nobody but you knows about the /forums22/ directory; if you set config.php to refer to your board's live database, remember to exercise caution (e.g., don't test deleting threads! Wink

).

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

Thanks for the fast reply.

I think I will ask the guy that does the mods on my site, I would never do anything like this myself as I am not that well up on what to do and so I leave it to the people that know what they are doing.

If he is not sure about the mod and has not installed it before then I may ask one of the experts on here to help as I am sure this mod would benefit my site greatly.

I was even considering changing over to Vbulletin as this has search engine friendly url's.

Thanks again Wink

HB · phpBB SEO Team Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 795

Your top priority is getting the "guest session mod" installed. Google has sid parms:

sample forum entries with sid

That means oodles of duplicates. I would also block profiles:

profiles from your site

Unless you wish to "reward" members. The downside is you're likely rewarding spammers too. Before you embark on title injection, learn about eliminating these duplicates. The zero dupe mod is immeasurably helpful in this regard, I would argue more important at this stage of your site's indexing than URLs. It does however required that you understand the "big picture."

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

Thanks for that,

I will take a look at the guest session mod.

I thought I had blocked the crawler from crawling profiles, but obviously it has not worked for some reason.

Every day I log in and check for spammers and delete their links and ban them.

Thanks for the advice Wink

HB · phpBB SEO Team Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 795

If this is yours http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/robots.txt

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

Ah

I wasn't blocking it in the robots file I block it in the software that I use to create the site map.

I use gsitecrawler and in there I have told it not to crawl those url's.

Thanks very much for that Wink

I will change the robots file asap Wink

dcz

In addition, you could as well disallow :

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

Thanks very much for the replies Wink

I have changed the robots'txt file and the mod rewrite will be installed in the next few days Wink

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

I got a friend to install the advanced rewrite mod and it is absolutely fantastic, I am really happy with the outcome Very Happy

In the next few days I will be looking at all the other mods on here as these change phpbb from a good script to a fantastic script!

Thanks to all those who have helped me via this post and via PM Wink

dcz

Great

ultimatehandyman · PR2 Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 205

I'd just like to update everyone on how my site has been doing since the mod rewrite was installed-

GREAT

Wink

Indexed pages in Google have increased from about 6500 to over 10,000 and pages in Yahoo have increased from 1900 to over 2400 Very Happy

That is certainly what you would call a great result.

Thanks to everyone that helped Wink

I'm now looking at the meta tags mod Wink

dcz

Feel free to post a report if you want to accurately track your results Wink

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