I have heard many times that various people have hacked their forums in order to be indexed by various search engines.

What is done to do this, other than adding a robot command saying index me to every page.

Is there a tutorial anyone knows of that explains what is done?

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Mr. Bob's Web Design - Tirelessly looking for ways to enhance the customer base of your business.

What is done to get your forums search engine friendly? A LOT! We discuss some of these ideas here: How can we promote a forum?

Over the past one year, I personally have tried many things, learnt a lot and I could actually write whole articles on the subject today - but right now I will just repeat what is already known everywhere else the subject is discussed:

• Hide / Get rid of session ids from SE bots
• Use mod rewrite if you're on an Apache web server

However, there are many other little details that makes a message board truly search engine friendly like this one is. I prefer not to share this other information right now for obvious reasons.

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Oh I see. But is there any info posted somewhere? That explains what to do.

How come you use vb?

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Mr. Bob's Web Design - Tirelessly looking for ways to enhance the customer base of your business.

Explains to do what? Remove session ids for Googlebot e.g.? That depends on your forum script - is it vB, phpBB or Invision?

If you use any of the free ones, I am 100% certain the subject has already been discussed on their support forums. If you're using phpBB, I can even point you to the specific thread on phpbb.com... However, of all the 'free' forum scripts available today, phpBB I think is the most SE friendly to-date - not perfect but good enough straight out-of-the-box!

Why I use vB? Good question... I guess I was PHP-stupid then. If I knew then what I know now (about PHP/MySQL), I would have saved myself the $160.00 and hacked phpBB to how this board is today.

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Do you plan to stay with vB then? I wish someone could point out the various pros/cons of other boards.

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Mr. Bob's Web Design - Tirelessly looking for ways to enhance the customer base of your business.

I suspect that this thread might be appearing on the SERPs for the phrase in your title, at the risk of going off-topic; I will quickly link to the relevant thread to:

phpBB: remove session ids for Search Engines.
Invision: as soon as I find the thread.

re: Will I continue with vB? Yes, but this copy will be my first and last purchase of the script. If I ever find myself in need of a forum script in the future, it will certainly be an open-source version (i.e. phpBB or Invision).

As for the 'pros and cons' among the different forum scripts, they're all negligible. Most forums function the same way... some with features built-in and some that you'd need to find help with to add (as a mod/hack). So, just go with the one that feels the most comfortable to you and of course, your users...

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

The blabber mouth in me made a booboo yesterday - I absent mindedly revealed one of my search engine friendly forum secrets on another forum!

So now that it's out in the open, might as well post it here too:

Hide every link inside a message or post (to search engine bots), so that you can avoid PR leak. For this to really work, as an administrator of a board or forum, you must also limit the allowable links inside a member's signature to a bare minimum or disallow it altogether.

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Did you do this recently? Because you are leaking (sone) PR, as of right now.

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Since Garth Farley replied to this thread: http://www.gidforums.com/t-396.html

About PR leaks, what do you mean exactly? Which links?

If you meant the links in one's signature and the little WWW button here - that was a conscious decision. However members are only allowed a set number of links in their signature (see the forum Signature Rules / Guidelines for details).

Anyone making an effort to join the community and sharing information deserves something, anything, back off the board.

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J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

"Anyone making an effort to join the community and sharing information deserves something, anything, back off the board."
- I agree with that. Unfortunately able 2 know [dot] come does not. Every link you post is edited. They expected you to read the forum rules before you signed up because I had to hear it from a member why it was edited.

My friend posted a short story inside a writers forum, and it was deleted without warning because they thought he was trying to get advertising for himself!

Bullsh!t! But that's why I do not post their, I wish those other guys wouldn't too, but the guy who runs it is smart- so I just leach off of him.

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Mr. Bob's Web Design - Tirelessly looking for ways to enhance the customer base of your business.