Forum links from link rel="chapter forum" to more

[hopster]

I noticed the forum links here on the page source files are much more descriptive:

Example of my forum:

<link rel="chapter forum" href="buggynews-sponsors-vf50.html" title="BuggyNews Sponsors" >
<link rel="chapter forum" href="forum-news-and-information-vf3.html" title="Forum News and Information" >

Example of this forum:

<link rel="Chapter Forums general-discussions" href="http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/general-discussions-vf8/" title="General Discussions">
<link rel="Chapter Forums seo-principles" href="http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/seo-principles-vf10/" title="SEO Principles">

Is this important?

Is this something we all should be doing?

How is it done?


Thanks...

-Steve

[dcz]

Ho well, that is true we could specialize a bit more the chapters, but nav links are not necessarily a very good thing in the end.

It's only supported by mozilla, if I recall well, and the only SEO interest is that it helps out a bit bots to find forum links (not the specialized chapters, only the urls, as they are rewritten by the phpBB SEO mod rewrite). But, most bot do not really get urged by these nowadays, Google sitemaps are way more efficient for indexing.

The only important thing is to make sure you do not let these unrewritten.

Many phpBB forum do not even use them, sometime they are even not outputted for obscure reasons ( well, reason no one really cared enough about to investigate further yet).

Some will say, and it's not wrong, that this is adding unnecessary weight to the page, and for topics it can be a substantial proportion.
For example this topic page, before I reply weights 37 645 bits, but it's only 30 830 bits without the nav bar links, 20% of the page weight.

++

[hopster]

Yeah, mine is huge... how can they be removed in that case?


-Steve

[dcz]

In includes/functions.php find :

Code: Select all

                  $nav_links['chapter forum'][$forum_rows[$j]['forum_id']] = array (
                  //   'url' => append_sid("viewforum.$phpEx?" . POST_FORUM_URL . "=" . $forum_rows[$j]['forum_id']),
                     'url' => $phpbb_seo->seo_url['forum'][$forum_rows[$j]['forum_id']] . $phpbb_seo->seo_delim['forum'] . $forum_rows[$j]['forum_id'] . $phpbb_seo->seo_ext['forum'],
                     'title' => $forum_rows[$j]['forum_name']
                  );
                  // www.phpBB-SEO.com SEO TOOLKIT END


And comment or delete

This will keep the basic nav links but prevent the forum ones, being the vast majority of them.

The other ones are only the search.php, faq.php and home links.

++

[hopster]

Excellent... and as always, thank you again!


-Steve