Hello dcz,
I have read a great number of your posts in the past 24 hours and I worked till 2am last night finishing converting our forum from Able2Know Mods to your nice version.
It seems to work fine - which is amazing since i am very ignorant of php coding. But your discussions with others and your thoughtful help have made it possible.
So I really wanted to thank you.

I have a few questions still.

I noticed on your previous post (above) that there was a further addition to the .htaccess file to redirect from post to new name format (I have used the advanced mods that inject title into html name / URL).

I have pretty good knowledge of Google (my philosophy website is 3 years old and gets around 50,000 page views a day). So i realise that duplicate content is bad, and I am wondering whether I need to add anything further to minimise this.

I think it is correct that I should not post links to my sites here - but hope it is ok to put them in brackets so they do not show as active links (I am not trying to build links!)
Philosophy site (www.spaceandmotion.com)
Philosophy Forum (www.physics-philosophy-metaphysics.com/forum/index.php)

I assume that you could check my .htaccess file from going to forum site - hope you can tell me if I need to do anything further / any other advice for improving things.
Thanks,
Geoff

PS - I am quite convinced that no matter how much you improve forum pages to be SEO friendly, that Google does not really take them seriously. My main spaceandmotion website has about 400 pages and gets 20,000 visitors a day from google - my forum (phpBB) has the same number of pages / posts and gets about 50 people a day from Google - a big difference given that both sites have some quality in bound links!
Google is pretty smart - I think it knows that most forums are full of chatter and are not quality pages to rank highly (yours is a nice exception!)

PPS - Will get back to you about adding meta tag info into pages and creating google sitemap - I do not yet understand how to do that - need to read more and think about it!

And Welcome

You can for sure post links to (your) web-sites among discussions, it's just a matter of posting links when necessary, and here it is

So unless you want inactive links like you posted, you're welcome to post links as long as it's done in a relevant context.

Then, I PM you the zero duplicate code right now, so you'll keep your 385 previous PageRank and URLs listed in your forum.
You'll need to keep the old able2know rewriterules in order for it to do it's job.

About Google and Forums, we are starting to go off topic, but, if you consider that a vanilla phpBB forum won't get even indexed (unless with huge PR like phpBB.com) you understand you cannot really say SEO does not matter.
Then, an HTML page is an HTML page, it's not about forum or not really, it's only about content.

Your http://www.spaceandmotion.com/ home page is huge in content, could even be too much actually, as the more content, the less clear search path leading to the page.
You'd probably obtain even better results if you'd separate it a bit, moving the full "Short Summary of Physics and the Wave Structure of Matter in Space" article in a dedicated page for example, things like that.

I think the difference with the forums you observed comes from the posts content, never as precise as articles can be. But as you said, forums can still obtain the search engine's interest.
That's why I always repeat to first care about content

By the way, great project of yours, I am sure you'll be interested by this topic

++

Hello dcz,

Thank you very much for your detailed reply and further help.
I will summarise what I have done, as it may be useful to others, and will hopefully confirm that I have done everything correctly.

1. I started with phpBB with able2know mods.
2. Removed Able2Know.com phpBB static URLs mod 1.0.0.txt Mods.
3. Removed includes/sessions.php mod in Able2Know.com phpBB SEO mod 2.0.0.txt
4. Added CyberAlien Session mod.
5. Added your two mods (advanced mod to inject page title into URL);
phpBB_SEO_Dynamic_Metatags_V_0.0.1.txt
phpBB-SEO-Advanced-mod-Rewrite_V_0.0.2.txt
6. Added further mods that you sent me in pm.

Hopefully this is complete - the forum seems to be working correctly.
I assume that the ultimate test is to see what pages Google shows in its site results, which I will know over the next month. The aim is to have no duplicate content in Google database for the forum.

Can you confirm that the above is correct and complete.

A couple of other things of relevance;

a) For the past 6 months our forum has shown about 850 pages in Google index. After I made your changes site was spidered that night and it now shows only 385 pages (as you noted). So it will be interesting to see how this changes over next month. (Will keep you informed)

b) In my internet searching I found the following site that offers a similar mods to you for phpBB forum (but they charge $85 for them from memory!).
I wrote to the guy first, then found your website - so i wrote back and told him I was proceeding with your mods. He replied that his were much better, and provided the following link which explains the differences.
(http://phpbb.magic-seo-url.com/comparis ... bb-seo.php)

I think it would be good if you put up a page here responding to his claims about what your mod does and does not do (I would certainly be curious to read it!).

c) Finally, I read that you have a mod for problems of www vs no www in URL (Google sees both as same address - thus leading to duplicate content problems)
In Google webmaster there is an option to tell Google which is the correct address (I have done this for both my sites). I assume that this would mean that there was no point in applying your mod.

In ending, I hope that you have great success with your project - I am certainly very impressed by your kindness, good humor and intelligence!

Sincerely,
Geoff

PS - With respect to article on page rank - I think people get too caught up in page rank when it only plays a minor part in how a page ranks for a particular keyword. Far more important is to have relevant keywords in important parts of page, in links pointing to page (both internal and external links), and good quality content that creates good user behaviour in how long they stay at site, how many pages they view, how often they return, etc. Given Google analytics, I suspect this aspect is becoming more important as it is impossible for spammers to fake a good site that people find useful.

PPS - I read that you have an interest in maths / physics. Hope you will think about the wave structure at some stage. Search Milo Wolff and read his work - it is a good start. (I am not trying to convince you of anything, hope you find it interesting!)

You're welcome

Sorry for delay, I missed this one.

a) You can accurately track your SEO result if you post a report, it is very possible the number of indexed page will go down with the zero dupe.

There is more than on duplicate per post with the able2know mod. To approximate the number of topic URLs, you can do this : number of post / post per page.

Usually, the number is close to reality, to go further you can add : number of topics / topic per page to include the forum's URL in total.

b) The claim is here, and guess what : Magic Seo Url
The comparison table is far from truth, and I am not sure they wanted my view on it, but, hey, I did not start.

c) Actually there is, because 1) Google is not the only bot on earth, and 2) it's always better to be sure, and here, it's the only way.

I agree with you about PageRank, but still, Stronger PR makes bot spidering more intense, cache updated faster, more listed pages and thus more search results and visits.

I think there is no big difference between 0 and 2 but going above 5 is a major step.
Then, I'll never repeat enough how much content is the most important, we only need to make sure our good content is not penalized or not optimized enough in this SEOeverything world if we want to decently show up in search engine results.

Running a vanilla phpBB is for sure far from enough, mod rewrite is a big step, you'll see zero duplicate is another one

About my maths / physics interests, I did not read Milo Wolff but Quantum Physics was my specialty back then, I was studying theoretical physics

++

i migrate from A2K.

all is ok all done all nice and functionaly.)

but need help with 301 in rewritemod for a2k

i use advenced RM

this is old rewrite fo A2K htaccess. i need to reedit to zer duplicate

Code: Select all

#RewriteRule viewforum.([0-9]*).([/:\-\'!?(){}&=_a-zA-Z0-9\ ]*).html viewforum.php\?f=$1
#konec
RewriteRule viewforum.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([0-9]*).html viewforum.php\?f=$1&topicdays=$2&start=$3
RewriteRule viewforum.([0-9]*)-s([a-zA-Z0-9_]*).html viewforum.php\?f=$1&start=$2
RewriteRule viewforum.([0-9]*)-mark([a-zA-Z0-9_]*).html viewforum.php\?f=$1&mark=$2
RewriteRule viewforum.([0-9]*).html viewforum.php\?f=$1
RewriteRule viewcat.([0-9]*).html index.php\?c=$1
RewriteRule watchtopic.([0-9]*)-([a-zA-Z]*)-([0-9]*).html viewtopic.php\?t=$1&$2=topic&start=$2
RewriteRule viewtopicres.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([a-zA-Z]*)-([a-zA-Z0-9_]*).html  viewtopic.php\?t=$1&postdays=$2&postorder=$3&vote=$4
RewriteRule viewtops.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([0-9]*).html viewtopic.php\?t=$1&start=$2&postdays=$3&highlight=
RewriteRule viewtops.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([a-zA-Z]*).html viewtopic.php\?t=$1&start=$2&postdays=$3&postorder=$4&highlight=
RewriteRule viewtoph.([0-9]*)-highlight-([/+:\-\'(){}&=_a-zA-Z0-9\ ]*) viewtopic.php?t=$1&highlight=$2 [L,NC]
RewriteRule viewtoph.([0-9]*)-s([0-9]*).html viewtopic.php\?t=$1&start=$2
RewriteRule viewtoph.([0-9]*)-([a-zA-Z0-9]*)-([/:\-\'(){}&=_a-zA-Z0-9\ ]*)\.html viewtopic.php\?t=$1&$2=$3
RewriteRule viewposth.([0-9]*)-([a-zA-Z0-9]*)-([/:\-\'(){}&=_a-zA-Z0-9\ ]*).html viewtopic.php\?p=$1&$2=$3
RewriteRule viewtopx.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*).html viewtopic\?t=$1&start=$2
RewriteRule viewtopp.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([a-zA-Z]*)-([0-9]*).html viewtopic.php\?t=$1&postdays=$2&postorder=$3&start=$4
RewriteRule viewpost.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([0-9]*).html viewtopic.php\?t=$1&postdays=$2&postorder=asc&start=$3
RewriteRule viewtopic.([0-9]*).html viewtopic.php\?t=$1
RewriteRule viewpost.([0-9]*).html viewtopic.php\?p=$1
RewriteRule search.([a-zA-Z0-9_]*)-([a-zA-Z0-9_]*)-([a-zA-Z0-9_]*)-([a-zA-Z0-9_]*).html search.php\?$1=$2&$3=$4
RewriteRule search.([a-zA-Z0-9_]*)-([/:\'(){}.&\+_a-zA-Z0-9\ ]*).html search.php\?$1=$2
RewriteRule search.html search.php
RewriteRule memberlist.([a-zA-Z0-9]*)-([a-zA-Z]*)-([0-9]*).html memberlist.php\?mode=$1&order=$2&start=$3
RewriteRule memberlist.html memberlist.php
RewriteRule faq.([a-zA-Z0-9]*).html faq.php\?mode=$1
RewriteRule faq.html faq.php
RewriteRule groupcp.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*).html groupcp.php\?g=$1&start=$2
RewriteRule groupcp.([0-9]*).html groupcp.php?g=$1
RewriteRule groupcp.html groupcp.php
RewriteRule viewprofile.([0-9]*)-([0-9]*).html profile.php\?mode=viewprofile&u=$1&l_start=$2
RewriteRule viewprofile.([0-9]*).html profile.php\?mode=viewprofile&u=$1

can help me ? thx.

If you followed well the topic, you need to keep these rewriterules at the bottom of your new .htaccess so that the old able2know URL still works.

Then, the zero dupe will redirect all

I pm you

++

wau i love it

Thanks.

Just make sure the redirect (vanilla + abl2know URLs) are working before you just wait and see

And do not forget the final touch

++

All looks like ok now.

http://forum.czemoney.com

- czech UTF8
- advenced RM
- zeroD
- mx sitemaps / Gsite (now invisible)
- RSS rewrite
- now work on robots.txt

Well, the mod rewrite is, but the zero D is not redirecting forum links so far -http://forum.czemoney.com/reky-vf35.html

But is redirecting topic ones : http://forum.czemoney.com/dupe-vt4330.html

And the old able2know URL are not redirected yet either.

So I guess you still need to add the abl2know rewriterules at the bottom of you actual .htaccess and edit viewforum.php

++

its only need add to viewforum
but it wasnt in PM.) now i try to reedit it for viewforum and its looks like ok for

-http://forum.czemoney.com/reky-vf35.html

now try edit vc

(thanks for debuging. )

Sorry, I forgot the viewforum par lol.

Anyway, PMed.

It seems though the old able2know links does not work yet, you really have to add the old abld2know rewriterules

++

My google sitemap shows I have 422 restricted URLs by robots.txt mainly of type -http://www.newindianmodels.com/forum/post147.html

Why is this so ?
How is google bot reaching to these URLs ??

Well these URLs exists, and they are and should be disallowed by the robots.txt, Google is only reporting what we already know and want here.

++

Ok agreed but how does google know that these URLs exist ? Do we have any links pointing to these URLs ? Google needs some reference to know about the existense of these URLs.