phpbb3 conversion help

[abhishek1711]

hi i run small forum www.IbsRocks.com. i wanna upgrade to phpbb3 with the seo mods , so can i do it using the pre moded package? my forum has quiete a few big/small mods - so am very sceptical if i should convert at all

i asked my freelancer, he said the pre moded package has some coding issues and better i dont go for it. and also says such seo mods are not needed in phpbb 3 as its seo friendly by default.

i dont think this guy can do it for me.

where can i find som1 to help me in the entire process even if for a fee. coz i dont even know fresh installation - leave alone something like conversion !

i know thts lot of queries and pretty desparate ! plz help

[SeO]

i asked my freelancer, he said the pre moded package has some coding issues and better i don't go for it. and also says such seo mods are not needed in phpbb 3 as its seo friendly by default.

Fire him!

Did he elaborate ? was he testing an RC and which one ?

Anyway, phpBB3 does need SEO :
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aw ... community/ => 123 000 indexed pages with 439551 topics

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aw ... b-seo.com/ => 5 600 indexed pages with 4216 topics (both forums).

As you can see, phpBB.com is pretty far from full indexing, since I doubt they deleted 300 000 topics.

And this is the very basis, our premod does not have duplicate content issues, and many many other things.

Then, about conversion, it's exactly the same to convert using vanilla phpBB3 or the premod, it's still phpBB3.

A lots of mods becomes useless with phpBB3, usually the most work is on styling, the best would be for you to give a try and see how it goes, you can do it without touching you online forum, so, it's worth a try (even couple ).

This topic should help you in this quest : phpBB2 => phpBB3 : Where to start

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[abhishek1711]

yeah i cant fire him , very senior @ phpbb forum

i saw the pre mod files....it asks to do lot of things mannually. i thought pre mod meant pre modded....click and done


any1 u can reffer to , got regualar works, am starting around 5 forums

[SeO]

yeah i cant fire him , very senior @ phpbb forum

Many coder do not care enough about SEO, I'd be happy to hear about what he does not like in our premod though.

i saw the pre mod files....it asks to do lot of things manually. i thought pre mod meant pre modded....click and done

Well it is premoded, and can be installed without editing a single file, but, you have some setting to do and thus to get familiar with.
It as easy to install as phpBB3, with more option to take care of, that's all.
Note that getting used to the SEO options provided will help you in your SEO quest, it's not time waisted at all

any1 u can reffer to , got regualar works, am starting around 5 forums

What do you mean refer to ? you want someone to do it for you ?

[abhishek1711]

yeah i meant som1 to do the entire conversion thing for me.

coz im on non techie, and i loose my mind over all these jargons and details. besides www.ibsrocks.com i also need help on 5 more forums i plan to develop.

www.ahmedabadrocks.com
www.indiainfodesk.com
www.mbarocks.com
www.bloggingrocks.com
www.simplyfoodie.com


i know its good to learn - but am an mba student, got lots more things to do. here the professors are after our lives

[abhishek1711]

u know i did the advanced seo rewrite on phpbb2 myself...and i think i messed it up a bit. the subforums are not included in the urls. if u check www.IbsRocks.com/forum

now when i convert to phpbb3 ill loose the urls which already have been indexed and few have got some PR too.

so better i dont do it myself

[dcz]

None of the forum you linked is heavily styled or modded it seems, and actually, only the first two seems to require conversion (last two are not reachable from where I stand), since -http://www.mbarocks.com/forum/ already is running phpBB3.

Since I can't find any sub forums, I assume you are talking about the virtual folder feature of the phpBB3 mod rewrite.

So, it's as explained here :

About the old URLs, two case :
- If you where not previously using url rewriting on your board, then, there is nothing more to do than installing / activating the zero duplicate (included in the premod), and all the previous URLs will be HTTP 301 redirected to the new one.
- If you where using URL rewriting, then, post your current .htaccess and I'll tell you what rewriterule to keep in your new .htaccess in order to redirect them too with the zero duplicate.

Nothing more

There is only one extra case, you can manage to keep the exact same urls coming from our phpBB2 mods, but, converting is rather a good occasion to think about using or not the new features.
Your biggest forum has 2204 posts, so it's really not a problem to redirect all the urls.

The only difficult part is choosing the best url structure, advanced, mixed or simple, with or without virtual folder. It's worth giving it a try.
After you're done with this, the only thing to do well is to switch all the sudden with everything up and running, redirecting included, for the smoothest migration in SERPs.

We did redirect massively on phpBB SEO if you want more clues about how it goes.

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