It's a not so advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO) module that does quite a lot, while offering the easy to use plugin format (No need of all those changes in your files..!). As with the most of the SEO modules, this plugin relies on mod_rewrite and thus works only on Apache webservers. This module utilizes the new rel="nofollow" of the search engines, instead of enforcing a couple of complex (and sometimes stupid!) rules to block out SE access to certain pages/urls.

This plugin also utilizes robots.txt with separate rules for googlebot making use of regex supported by googlebot, while still offering more generic rules for other search engines.

Want to read more? Sorry, I am feeling lazy to write more, but you can borrow a good book from any public (and outdated) library in your area, to satisfy your reading requirements. (err, nevermind, that was a bit off the top)

I) Requirements:

• Webserver supporting .htaccess (do not ask me why it's a requirement. I just don't like cake without cream -- although weight and cream relationship is another story)
• MyBB 1.2 (sorry if I confused you, but don't expect this plugin to work with another forum software, or even worse a windows application .)
  

II) What it Does?

Although it does quite a lot for my needs, I just can't list it all at the moment. (no, it doesn't makes me coffee) Features:

• Replaces all forum urls with SE friendly urls.
• Replaces topic urls with SE friendly urls at forumdisplay.
• Adds rel="nofollow" tag to all links that need not be followed by search engines.
• Offers a robots.txt file for search engines that don't support rel="nofollow" (eh, it's time for, back to school)
• Announcement links are convert into SE friendly urls.
• Removes site title when viewing categories, forums or sub-forums. I am sure you don't want to see "My Site Name - Computer Hardware" in your page title (or at least search engines don't ) .
  

III) How to install:

1. Download and extract seo.php from seo_plugin.zip
2. Open up your favorite FTP software, browse to your forum_dir/inc/plugins. (sorta straightforward)
3. [optional but highly recommended] Upload robots.txt to your root directory. You'll need to edit the paths if your forum isn't in your root domain. For example, if you have your forum at http://domain.com/forums/ instead of http://forums.domain.com, then you'll need to edit the paths in the file. For example, change:
   
   Disallow: /member.php*$
   
   To:
   
   Disallow: /forums/member.php*$
4. It would nice if you could chmod your main forum directory and/or .htaccess file to 0777 for now. (remember to revert it back to it's original settings if you change it for the directory). However, this isn't necessary.
5. Go to your Admin CP -> Plugin Manager, and activate the SEO plugin.
6. If the SEO plugin function cannot write to the .htaccess file, it will give you the code that you should place in your .htaccess file.
7. [Optional] Please add this line in your MyBB's footer template or deactivate the SEO plugin. Even paid mods like vbSEO demand it, so I think it's fair enough to ask for a backlink. Though the choice is yours as it's optional.
   
   Find in footer template: (login to AdminCP -> Modify/Delete (under Templates at left) -> Expand on each template -> Edit 'footer' template)
   
   
   Code:
   
   {$lang->copyright} &copy; 2002-{$copy_year} <strong><a href="http://www.mybboard.com" target="_blank">MyBB Group</a></strong>

   Add Below:
   
   

   Code:
   
   <br />Search Engine Optimization by <strong><a href="http://spicefuse.com">SpiceFuse</a></strong>

That's all!

Download URL: http://spicefuse.com/mybb_mods/seo_plugin_11_b1.zip
Live Demo: http://spicefuse.com/index.php (this forum)

== Configuring portal to use SEO URLs

################
Open portal.php
################

-------------
Find:
-------------

-------------
Add Below:
-------------

-------------
Find:
-------------

-------------
Add Below:
-------------

################
Save/Close portal.php
################

== History

1.1 Beta 1: (August 04, 2008)

- Made compatible with version 1.4.
- Added feature to have directory structure such as /forum-name/topic-name-t-xy.html
- Added it as an option to convert users urls to /username-u-xy.html or members/username-xy.html

History lost! Will be updated later. Latest version is beta 9!

Beta 3:

- Made compatible with version 1.2.
- Fixed the parsing of comma character.

Beta 2:

- Parsing of "?" character in the urls, resulting in encoded characters.
- "Header already sent" errors were produced on clicking on any thread when using PHP5.
- When clicked on "last" link, at forumdisplay, with a topic having many pages, it used to result in 404 error because of a corrupt link. (Thanks IMPAQ for reporting)
- Clicking on "Last post" was taking to the last page of thread, but not scrolling down to the last post. (Thanks IMPAQ for reporting)

05-24-2006 01:11 PM

This post was last modified: 08-03-2008 09:05 PM by Pacifier.

Updated to beta 2, bugfixes:

- Parsing of "?" character in the urls, resulting in encoded characters.
- "Header already sent" errors were produced on clicking on any thread when using PHP5.
- When clicked on "last" link, at forumdisplay, with a topic having many pages, it used to result in 404 error because of a corrupt link. (Thanks IMPAQ for reporting)
- Clicking on "Last post" was taking to the last page of thread, but not scrolling down to the last post. (Thanks IMPAQ for reporting)

The updated zip file on the server includes the bugfixes.

06-13-2006 02:44 PM

Hi,

What redirect code are you using for your portal.php?

Thanks

07-16-2006 07:38 PM

That isn't related to the SEO mode, but well, it's a DirectoryIndex directive in use, setting portal.php as directoryindex in a .htaccess file.

<IfModule mod_dir.c>
DirectoryIndex portal.php index.php
</IfModule>

07-17-2006 01:35 PM

Thanks for the awesome mod! I have just implemented it in the forum I am developing, and cannot thankyou enough, great work!

07-20-2006 06:44 AM

hi Pacifier we will wait the seo mods 2.0 version for mybb 2.0 because seo mod 1.0 don't work with it....

09-03-2006 11:27 AM

I will update the modification in 2-3 days to make it compatible with the newer version.

Edit: Updated for MyBB version 1.2.

09-05-2006 07:03 AM

This post was last modified: 09-06-2006 12:42 PM by Pacifier.

Hello

Thanks for this mod Asad. I am curios about one thing though. On the index.php page in the "last post" column the link to the last post is in the traditional form with query strings and all. But once I navigate to a forum the thread link is SEOed so to speak. How can the link the last post column also be optimized?

Thanks

09-12-2006 04:04 PM

Why do you think it should be done? *wonders*

It would rather be possible to remove that link because the data on the index isn't cached so either it will be required to mod (hard-coded) the files or increase the number of queries. I don't want to make this plugin into a hack and also I don't want to increase the number of mysql queries used by this plugin.

09-12-2006 05:39 PM

Hi,

thanks for an excellent plugin. I'm currently preparing a conversion from phpBB to myBB and your SEO plugin is just what I need.

There's one thing that's missing for non-english users though ... the ability to replace non-standard characters such as German umlauts in the generated URLs.

I'm not a coder. I tried inserting statements such as

at various places in the source but not to much avail I'm afraid. ;)

How would I go about defining such replacements?

Thanks again and kind regards,
Zorro

10-04-2006 06:28 PM