Ok, I have been looking at this system for qute some time and I think I am ready to go for it.

From what I understand, the best system for me would be..

Mixed Mod rewrite
Mixed Zeo Dupe
Mx Sitemaps
Optimal Titles

Does that sound right? Are there more things you would add, remove, or change any of the versions?

I have already went through the steps to address the www. issue and also already add the Guest Sessions Mod.

What do I do now? Thanks in advance for any help!

Chris

yes this sounds right

As you run cyber alien guest sessions and the www prefix redirection, telling us mod_rewrite is available, it's pretty straight forward.

You can proceed in the order you suggested, the only "trick" could be to upload the new .htaccess prior to uploading the updated php files for the mod rewrite.

You'll be able to test rewritten links like a nice postxx.html and make sure it's installed properly before you upload the other files.

Besides, you can proceed step by steps.

Take your time, it's easy, but it's easier if you install one mod at a time and makes sure every time it's installed well

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If you can mirror your site to a test site, that's ideal. For my initial testing, I use xampp locally and then upload to a test site mirror hosted by the same ISP as my live board. There's sometimes small differences in versions that can cause problems (e.g., my ISP has a backlevel version of MySQL installed).

A couple comments on xampp (or xampplite): By default, rewrite is disabled. Uncomment this line in httpd.conf:

Code: Select all

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Also remember not to use localhost as your test site name. Instead define an entry in your hosts file mapped to 127.0.0.1 (e.g., -www.myphpbb-seo.com); otherwise cookies aren't correctly stored in some browsers. The rest is the usual running phpBB on xampp caveats (see How can I setup a testing platform?).

One other tip: I defined a "enableAdvancedModRewrite" function in common.php that tested if current user_id was a tester and added "if (enableAdvancedModRewrite())" around the phpBB-seo code modifications. That way I was able to deploy to the live board and test it for a couple weeks before enabling it to the whole membership. In the end, only a few bugs were detected by the testers, but when I did "throw the switch", I was certain there would be no major snafus.

(And someone did find a minor bug the same day it went live ).

cool, thanks for all your help guys! One question.

Is it possible to copy my forum folder to say a forum2 folder so I can modify the forum2 folder using the same database and test that way?

example...

Live board: www.mydomain.com/forum

Copy to: www.mydomain.com/forum2 (edit these files and test)

both the above using the same DB so mods function correctly?

Thanks, Chris

Sort of. The problem is that the database's php_config table records the forum script path. A number of URLs are built using this entry.

You can just copy the forum to forum2, but you'll find yourself being redirected back to forum from time-to-time. The better way is to copy your database, copy your forum files to forum2, update the config.php to point to the copied database, and update the phpbb_config entries cookie_domain, server_name, and script_path in the copied database. Then you can run the two independently. Once you're confident everything is correct, rename the forum to forum_yymmdd (backup) / forum2 to forum and update the config.php. Fini.

This allows you to calmly work on a "semi-live" version of your board without the risk of badly screwing something up.

Ahh, that makes sense. I think I will copy it locally to my computer (have mac with apache and mysql installed). Then I will test it all locally. I will follow your directions from above about the localhost thing too.

I'll see what I can get done and aks here if I have any questions.

Chris

ok, another question before I jump ahead. I use php_fetch all on my website. Is this going to cause problems?

Also, if a lot of my urls are already indexed in google, will all those links still work? I'm guessing that they will by using the redirect but I think my brain is confusing myself at this point.

if you're talking about the phpBB fetch all mod, well there will be some small patches to apply on the code you're fetching, but it's no big deal.

At first, before we patch them, some mods and add on can output unrewritten URLs.

And you got it right, it's no big deal to have some left overs at first, if you install the zero duplicate. They'll all get http 301 redirected, as per with your old vanilla urls.

The redirection are quite easy to deal with as long as the zero dupe is installed properly. Google won't have problems about it. Example.

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I am now starting to do this (have been busy).

Question 1) in the install files it says to be careful of the order in the .htaccess file.

Right now my .htaccess file consists of in the following order...

-the www prefix rewrite rules
-some redirects I have setup
-custom error page settings


With the new rewrite rules, how should I order the .htaccess file?


Questions 2) The install files talks about getting rid of the index.php? Does this need to happen? All my links on my site and I am sure most bookmarks point to the index.php file? Or, is this something that doesn't matter?

Sorry if I am asking stupid questions but my forum is fairly large and I don't want to mess anything up.

Thanks, Chris

You're very right to be cautious. Not that is is difficult, but rather that it is strategic.

So for 1), the order should be :

- the options (including the error document directives)
- start the rewrite engine
- www prefix redirections
- custom http 301 redirections if any
- forum rewriterules
- modules rewriterules
- old standard rewriterules (if needed for the zero dupe)

And if you've got other rewriterules, it depends, it should work before and after the forum rewriterules, if you have doubts, just post your full .htaccess.

2) index.php.

you can keep the index.php usage by just replacing :

Code: Select all

         'index' => ''

And replace with :

Code: Select all

         'index' => 'index.php'

in phpbb_seo/phpbb_seo_class.php

Links inside the forum will use index.php and the zero duplicate will work accordingly

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thanks for the tips, I am very excited to get this going and I think I am ready.

What's the difference between not using and using index.php with this?

It's just that many times, people post more backlinks without the index.php to link the forum index. On most phpBB forum, you end up with both -www.example.com/phpBB/ and -www.example.com/phpBB/index.php ranked and working.
It's duplicate content on a very important page, so we want to either redirect one or the other but not keeping both.
And as we can easily manage to get rid of index.php in phpBB links with this mod (doing it by default) and redirect index.php (as here : http://www.phpbb-seo.com/boards/index.php ), and we cannot easily change all external backlinks, we should go for the most handy and used standard.

If as many other you ended up with more external backlinks without index.php, you should get rid of it inside the forum.
Usually, the page getting the most PR between the two possible duplicates should be the target, but if you've no reasons against it, getting rid of index.php is the best as people will again most likely not include it when back-linking.

This being said, the zero duplicates makes both choices almost identical SEO wise, backlinks using the two kind of url will be properly redirected (http 301)

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that makes sense, I will go without index.php.

I just put out my new live .htaccess file and would like to test it as you said to do before I put my files in place. How do I go about testing the changes.

*I sound like a complete newbie (I am to this seo/rewrite stuff)

I just ran the page rank checker for both

www.egriz.com/GrizBoard [PR 0] and www.egriz.com/GrizBoard/index.php [PR 4]

so I would take a guess that I want to use the index.php in mod rewrite, or will zero duplicates take care of that issue for me?

Also, I am still having issues testing my .htaccess before I put all the php code files in place. I put the .htaccess rules in place but they don't seem to be doing anything to my forum URL's. Any tips?

Thanks

[some day I won't be such a pain but I really want to learn this stuff ]

Don't worry, it's easy to test.

The .htaccess does not alter URL, it's only allowing our new url to work. The php code changes are the one rewriting our URLs.

Just try a post url to start with, the pattern is easy : example.com/phpBB/postxx.html.

postxx.html stand for viewtopic.php?p=xx, post's urls.

So grab a post url, on your forum index for example, and use it's id to build up you test url, like post213.html.
If it works, mod_rewrite is available and everything installed properly as far as the .htaccess.
You can test all type of url if you want, with the zero dupe you can try whatever-fxx.html for a forum url (viewforum.php?f=xx) and topicxx.html for a topic url, since you're using the mixed mod rewrite.

About the index.php, it looks like index.php was mostly used for backlinks, so you could stay with it, the zero dupe would then redirect example.com/ to example.com/index.php.

You just need to do as I told you a little above, if you go for getting rid of it instead, you should end up with the same PR after the next data center update, but one could wisely think it's better to stay as is, as thing a going quite well.

The zero dupe would still redirect all possible links to index.php, so , it would en up being the exact same SEO wise.

It's just that it occurs quite often to see the phpBB root dir better ranked than the index.php, even though the forum is linking using the index.php.
As people usually backlink to the root dir.

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