what are the characteristics of SEO template ?

[AmirAbbas]

Any chance of a copy of the latest files for your 2.xx version of the template? I'd be very interested in taking a look and continuing development. There are loads of us using 2.xx after all.

i will work on it again after 5th of february

first i need to separate content from presentation.
i want to make a unique html file like CSS zen garden HTML file and after that i will style it.

at this time the html and CSS file for this template is not orgenized
if you are interested to help for developing this template and you are familiar with html and CSS please send a PM for me.

[mreider]

The work I've done on my own site has definitely helped, if not SEO then at the very least speed. It's faster loading, and reduces bandwidth. And I'm sure I've had some seo 'boosts' in google and stuff.

I've been pretty ruthless though. I've renamed all the stock images from things like "mini_post_img" to "mpi" for example (and renamed the images folder as mentioned in a previous post). It's amazing how much code bloat can be elminated with simple changes like that!

[mreider]

One other thing I did was remove redundant alt and title attributes. On images that are like 5x5 px there's no need for an alt and title that says "This will take you to their profile" or something like that. I just stripped those out all together, unless I thought it would impair usability significantly.

[mreider]

Oh yeah - THis is debatable, but you may want to replace some of the alt atributes with your keywords. They might help your on-page seo, but I don't think dramatically and could be seen as keyword stuffing.

For example the standard alt attribute of the profile image is "View this users profile"

If your site it about travel, you could say "View this travelers profile" for example. It might help...it might not..Either way I'm sure it's not a big deal.

[mreider]

Ok I promise this will be my last post in a row

One other thing. In viewtopic_body.tpl I put

Code: Select all

<!-- BEGIN switch_user_logged_in -->

and

Code: Select all

<!-- END switch_user_logged_in -->

Before and after where the template calls the images like "{postrow.EMAIL_IMG}".

I figure it helps protect the users from spammers, since their emails won't be visible to guests, and it cuts down on code that is useless to search engines.

I have it block everything except for profile and PM. Maybe I should block those too, but for now I'm leaving them visible to all.

[dcz]

Well, it depends.
SEO wise, you can get rid of all profiles links, try browsing this site unregistered, you won't see them.
But they are striped out in php, it's faster than templates switches.

It can be handy though to get rid of some links in the template, it's just that there would be many to take care of.
It could be better to first release something universal and give hints about thing like this.

++

[BFTUK]

I've got a couple of members from my forum working on continuing with amir's template.

Once we've got some more pages done i'll post the code here.

[sportman1280]

Sweet!!

[yazerty]

Oh my God, this 'll be great if a full css (without tables) version of phpbb comes !!!
I 'm already one of your fans .

[Bicet]

Why not to use Lo-Fi Mod?

Is table-less

You can grab it here:

http://www.phpbbguru.net/community/download.php?id=802

It doesn't use table only for Bots

[dcz]

well, its not exactly the same principle.

The lo fi mod adds a new url for the low fi version, so it's not exactly as running a real table less template. It's a simplified version of the actual forum layout on another location.

SEO wise, it's not necessarily the best thing to do. You create a pseudo duplicate entry, two url with same content, but not the same exact code.

Both should show up in SERPs unless you do something about it, and this can create some confusion.
I usually prefer to concentrate all my effort on a single URL. The risk is to see both pages appearing in SERPs, at a lower position than if you'd only allowed one, and to see the lo-fi one a bit before the other one in most cases, which leads us to the second matter I do not particularly appreciate as a regular user : I do not like this much when I end up in a lo fi or printer friendly version of a web site when searching, just because these usually miss all the user friendly features the real web site has, and makes further browsing a bit less obvious IMHO. I'm not a printer

So it depends, accessibility is a real great thing, but I'm not sure we should always work on SEO all the possible format we run on a web site (printable, wap, lo fi and etc ...) as this creates as well some confusion, SEO and user wise.

I know many big web site do use and abuse these, but I'm not convinced this would be this great on the long run, at least, not in all cases.

++

[mreider]

My tip of the day.

If you don't have any images with a border applied (usually only happens when you link an image, like img src="lala.jpg" border="0") then you can remove all instances of border="0" in your phpbb templates.

Add this to your css file:

Code: Select all

a img {border:none;}

Then if you use Dreamweaver or another find / replace program you can do a search for

Code: Select all

border="0" /

And replace it with nothing. The most important one I find is viewtopic.php which has a tonne of those in it.

Just helps reduce the code bloat.

WARNING! Some tables have the border="0" applied to them as well, so I recommended using a find and replace program to take you to each instance of border="0" and you can double check that it is in an image tag.

It'll take an extra 10 minutes but save you from possibly messing up your template.

[Bicet]

well, its not exactly the same principle.

The lo fi mod adds a new url for the low fi version, so it's not exactly as running a real table less template. It's a simplified version of the actual forum layout on another location.

SEO wise, it's not necessarily the best thing to do. You create a pseudo duplicate entry, two url with same content, but not the same exact code.

Both should show up in SERPs unless you do something about it, and this can create some confusion.
I usually prefer to concentrate all my effort on a single URL. The risk is to see both pages appearing in SERPs, at a lower position than if you'd only allowed one, and to see the lo-fi one a bit before the other one in most cases, which leads us to the second matter I do not particularly appreciate as a regular user : I do not like this much when I end up in a lo fi or printer friendly version of a web site when searching, just because these usually miss all the user friendly features the real web site has, and makes further browsing a bit less obvious IMHO. I'm not a printer

So it depends, accessibility is a real great thing, but I'm not sure we should always work on SEO all the possible format we run on a web site (printable, wap, lo fi and etc ...) as this creates as well some confusion, SEO and user wise.

I know many big web site do use and abuse these, but I'm not convinced this would be this great on the long run, at least, not in all cases.

++

You're wrong, the Lo-fi Mod didn't add a duplicate, please check it better. If you're a bot you'd detected and the URL is not modified, it only applies a different theme to the content.

And the page shown on serp is the main one, like this one you see on this forum....

[dcz]

That's probably why I talked about "pseudo duplicate"

Then, I saw the cookie setting and though one could load the lo-fi without the additional params, but there is as well an additional get variable.

The thing is I assumed you where not talking about providing lo fi to all guest or to cloak SEs.

That's how it is, you can either run a really light template for guests, use pseudo duplicate URLs or cloak SEs, as showing a different page to guest and bots is cloaking and can lead to blacklist.

Nothing I'd recommend to do actually.

++

[Bicet]

It's not a different page, it has only a different template, and again is not using neither the cookie neither the variables... Take a look at templates/subsilver/xs.cfg and you will see what I'm talking about...