Going SEO with phpBB3 new install

[globetrotting]

Salut,

first of all big thanks for your MOD (google should honour you), for all the support you give and the positive vibes the admins radiate here.

I want to migrate my phpBB2 (no URL-rewrite) -> phpBB3 and the release of 3.0.1 seems to be a good opportunity to do so.

Although the old board has always been very well spidered, the fast adaptation of your premod only a few days after the 3.0.1.-release helped me to decide for phpBBSEO.

I think I might attempt to use the advanced mode with title injection, as I virtually live in our forum and basically read all of it's 50k entries.
More so, I have edited topic titles for years in order for them to make more sense.
Would title injection be your advice as well?

So far I converted the data base to a new db and made a new install of your premod 3.0.1 in an unused subdomain (and excluded all folders to bots by a robot.txt) for testing purposes.

My old board was mediumly modded and I will have to mod phpBB3 as well to match the old forum's abilities.
That brings me to the questions, how well phpBBSEO integrates german language and modding - if there are any mods known to be likely to cause problems, i.e. out of phpBB2-experience.

Most important mods for my needs would be anti-spam-bots, related topics, a shout-box, the most flexible inline ad-manager available, and hopefully a revenue-share-mod once it exists...

BTW: I couldn't find "related topics" for phpBB3, but saw it working on HB's forum, so maybe http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/advance ... vt729.html is still valid?

On top of that my old board showed the last's topic title in the very right column in every view, which is especially useful on index.
If possible, I'd like to restore that as well.

Not understanding a lot concerning modRewrite - how should my workflow continue after installation - install the mods first before doing any SEO-related settings, I would think?

Thank you for advice

[dcz]

Salut,

first of all big thanks for your MOD (google should honour you), for all the support you give and the positive vibes the admins radiate here.

Thanks, and you're welcome

From the very beginning of phpBB SEO, I believe that we all have interest in common to share the best SEO solutions for our site, because otherwise, only money could make the difference, and I like the web to be a place where everybody has a chance to start a successful site and focus on what matters the most : content.

I want to migrate my phpBB2 (no URL-rewrite) -> phpBB3 and the release of 3.0.1 seems to be a good opportunity to do so.

It is actually

I think I might attempt to use the advanced mode with title injection, as I virtually live in our forum and basically read all of it's 50k entries.
More so, I have edited topic titles for years in order for them to make more sense.
Would title injection be your advice as well?

With a good topic title average quality, it's the most powerful mod. If phpBB is installed in the domain's root, activating the virtual folder trick can help out to categorize content and to associate all topics within a forum with selected keywords. If installed in a sub folder, you can still use it, but it's better to use it together with the virtual root option to keep shorter urls (it' the main thing to look at when injecting topic titles, after topic title quality off course).
Now, after the pros, the cons would be to compare how phpBB is optimized in comparison with the other pages in the whole site, if any of course. Under some circumstances, you may want the CMS nice articles to show up before the forum threads in serps (since the risk is great that the forum would be more optimized in the end with our mods )

The best alternative is the mixed one with virtual folders, since you'll still be able to use selected keywords in topic urls (forum-keywords/topicxx.html).

So far I converted the data base to a new db and made a new install of your premod 3.0.1 in an unused subdomain (and excluded all folders to bots by a robot.txt) for testing purposes.

It's the way to go, you can test conversion et all before going online this way.

That brings me to the questions, how well phpBBSEO integrates german language and modding - if there are any mods known to be likely to cause problems, i.e. out of phpBB2-experience.

Well no, you may need to implement a custom filter in the phpbb_seo_class.php format_url() method to take care of special chars such as ß, it's easy to do, only something to test before going online.
Post a thread with the worst special cases and you'll see what eventually requires special attention, and then post here, I'll provide the small tweak

Most important mods for my needs would be anti-spam-bots, related topics, a shout-box, the most flexible inline ad-manager available, and hopefully a revenue-share-mod once it exists...

Anti bot question was upgraded for phpBB3 if a recall well, but I'm not sure it's this useful anymore with phpBB3, since the new captcha has become a lot more efficient (here a better captcha is all we use to fight against automated spam with very good results), and all forms are now tokenized, so ...
For the related topics, I'm not sure, but what is for sure is, the mod will exist and will be patched
About adds, I don't know of a sharing mod already, but look in phpBB.com for topy's adsense mod, it's simple and efficient (and not hard to find with the author name ).

On top of that my old board showed the last's topic title in the very right column in every view, which is especially useful on index.
If possible, I'd like to restore that as well.

This is included in the premod, activate the no dupe in acp and voilà : http://phpbb3.phpbb-seo.net

Not understanding a lot concerning modRewrite - how should my workflow continue after installation - install the mods first before doing any SEO-related settings, I would think?

Well, the simplest way for sure is to directly convert using the premod, all you'll need to do is to activate the zero duplicate (taking care about the post redirection option as well) and wait about two month before you implement the advised robots.txt for all the urls to be properly HTTP 301 redirected.
This usually occurs without loosing serps or referral, the important thing being to start the redirecting (eg to switch from phpBB2 to phpBB3) as suddenly as possible and to keep the url standard defined (hesitation is not very good here). But beside, there is no problem really, pretty big boards (over 50 000 topics) already did it successfully.

That's as well what we'll do here when upgrading (and already did in the past for other reasons).

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[globetrotting]

Thank you dcz, I really appreciate your detailed answers to all of my questions.

For the time being I have three more:

- Is the advised SID-removal (Cyber Alien) tweak still necessary in phpBB3, is it integrated in the premod? I couldn't find any adaptation of it for phpBB3.

- HB wrote in another thread that there will be GYM- and RSS-fixes integrated in future premods. Would it be worthwhile waiting - is there a rough estimation concerning the time frame?

- I noticed that the topic title of my answer here is empty. I had my old board modified to display the title of the starting topic (without the "Re:") in all answers by default, as it helps users to stick to the topic. I can't imagine this would harm SEO-wise, as the text of all messages under the same topic title (URL-name) will differ. Am I wrong?

[dcz]

Thank you dcz, I really appreciate your detailed answers to all of my questions.

You're welcome

- Is the advised SID-removal (Cyber Alien) tweak still necessary in phpBB3, is it integrated in the premod? I couldn't find any adaptation of it for phpBB3.

phpBB3 does get rid of SIDs for bots in its list (with pretty much all bots by default), but you can go further if you activate SID removing for guest in the phpBB SEO ACP. The zero duplicate will always redirect outdated or useless (eg when a cookie is available) SIDs
So you'll see some while browsing, but you'll never see any in SERPs

- HB wrote in another thread that there will be GYM- and RSS-fixes integrated in future premods. Would it be worthwhile waiting - is there a rough estimation concerning the time frame?

It could already have been released, but, IRL and phpBB3 dev made it longer than first expected, but it will be worth it. Chances are great though that this will be done before summer, but there is no guarantee.
Have you already been teased ?
http://phpbb3.phpbb-seo.net/sitemap.php
http://phpbb3.phpbb-seo.net/rss.php
http://phpbb3.phpbb-seo.net/rss.php?m

You can though go for phpBB3 before this, sitemaps will help for sure, but, with all the tricks already in place, you'll still get full crawl

- I noticed that the topic title of my answer here is empty. I had my old board modified to display the title of the starting topic (without the "Re:") in all answers by default, as it helps users to stick to the topic. I can't imagine this would harm SEO-wise, as the text of all messages under the same topic title (URL-name) will differ. Am I wrong?

Well, it is when you post, but indeed it isn't :

Re: Going SEO with phpBB3 new install

Here it's a mod, phpBB3 does the same by default.

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[globetrotting]

Hi again

it took us an awful lot of time to adapt design, structure and code of the meanwhile phpBB3.0.2 pre-modded forum which is running on beta test now with a robot.txt which should exclude all SE.

Can I switch and play with the various options of URL rewriting & virtual folder under these conditions without messing things up internally / externally and easily switch "back to normal" if needed?

...Under some circumstances, you may want the CMS nice articles to show up before the forum threads in serps (since the risk is great that the forum would be more optimized in the end with our mods )

That's a risk I'd be ready to run.

[dcz]

If you are disallowing only the phpBB3 test install, then it's ok, but since you are talking about going back to normal, make sure you did not actually disallow your existing forum.
Because I don't see how really you could need to go back to normal with a test install, I'd assume that a test install is separated from the real one if you see what I mean.

Anyway, generally speaking, going back to normal after you'd have used some url rewriting is of course possible, it's more or less the same as going from natural to url rewritten urls, the zero dupe isn't really meant to be used this way, but it would not be very hard to have it do the job in both directions.

Good to hear that things are going forward for your project.

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[globetrotting]

Sorry for the ambiguity.
With "back to normal" I meant the possibility of the test board to return to it's original un-SEOed phpBB-URLs after testing all the rewrite options.

[dcz]

Well again, if you're willing to test, do it on a local / private server so you won't have to go back to anywhere if you do not want to use it in the end.

Now, and again, if you start to use our mods and later decide to go back to normal, it will still be possible, but you'll have to implement the required HTTP 301 redirections, from the url rewritten to the regular urls.

Our mods are not jails

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[globetrotting]

Hi again

Even after a weekend of reading I'm still a bit confused as

http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/advance ... t3363.html :
Old posted links will still work and properly be redirected, and all the dynamic links will instantly use the new url.

seems to contradict

http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/advance ... t3363.html :

Code: Select all

*  Posts Redirections (optional):
      Quote:
      This option will determine how to handle post urls; it can take four values :
          o 'off' : do not redirect post url, whatever the case,
          o 'post' : only make sure postxx.html is used for a post url,
          o 'guest' : redirect guests if required to the corresponding topic url rather than to the postxx.html, and only make sure postxx.html is used for logged users,
          o 'all' : redirect if required to the corresponding topic url.



If you redirect postxx.html to the corresponding topic URL in all cases, this as well mean that a message that would be posted in a thread and then moved in another one will see it's url changing, which thanks to the zero duplicate mod is of no harm SEO wise, but the previous link to the post won't link to it anymore in such case.

Then of course, better can be better.

What would be the safest advanced- & No / Zero Duplicate options to avoid broken links in case of multiple post renaming, merging of topics and moving whole topics into other fora?
The later will be necessary big time after migration, as the whole board will be re-structured because of the new option to create subfora.
But even later, renaming, cloning and moving will happen commonly on my board.

If I understand well, using the virtual folder trick (in root installation) for forumtitle- or keyword URL-injection would also produce an additional risk of broken links?

Although SEO is nice, I wouldn't like users to encounter many old broken links and keeping links correct would have my priority.

So which advanced, No- or Zero-Duplicate settings would you recommend me?

Thank you for your patience

[dcz]

Well, about posts, they are the only urls that will always stay valid to reach a post, with and without url rewriting.
For example, if post #3 of topic XX gets moved to another thread, the topic url (rewritten or not) will still lead to the topic where the post was, but the #3 post won't be there any more.
Only the post url (viewtopic.php?p=3 or post3.html) will still reach it.
This means that there are some edge cases where the last page of a topic could not exist any more after you moved some posts, but again, it's the same with and without url rewriting.
The only thing that change with url rewriting is that we can get rid and or redirect popst urls to the corresponding topic url to prevent duplicates (since post urls are duplicate of topic urls).

So if you think that post urls are important in your forum because you'll be moving post a lot in between threads, you can just deactivate the no duplicates and they will show up rewritten as postxx.html.

This way, you will be able to post links to posts that will always be valid.
To properly deal with duplicate, you could set up post redirect to message or guest, setting it to guest would redirect guest and bot to the current corresponding topic url (which would be updated instantly if the post would be moved) and your user logged in user would still see them and be able to use since they would not be redirected.
You could as well only rely on the robots.txt to disallow postxx.html urls, but this would lower the impact of postxx.html links SEO wise, since bot would ignore them.

Some more testing of the premod settings should make this clear

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