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Topic: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

Would punBB be interested in starting a punBB web development forum for webmasters to goto and discuss about incorporating their forums, blogs and everything into web sites effectively?  I would consider being a moderator for the forum and a GURU on the subject for the web development.  I think there is a strong enough user prescence here that we could definatly get something real sweet going.  Let me know what you guys think.


Ryan Thompson

Home Decor Lighting - The SEO Project

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

err whats wrong with this forum for discussing things like that? (also whats an SEO?) and what makes you a GURU on web development?

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

yeah tough guy wink I am not sure what raynt is "exactly" refering to.  Being a that web development is a hobby for me, and I am still learning,  This is the place where I come for punBB related web developement issues as well as it should be.  Oh yeah and I go to http://www.punres.org/ also wink

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Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

ryant, that would be a good idea, the interest is there for integrating PunBB into exisiting sites.

connorhd, if Rickard wants us discussing integrating PunBB with Nucleus, Mambo, Gallery, Coppermine or take your pick, then that's up to Rickard to create a new forum here.

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

ryant wrote:

I would consider being a moderator for the forum and a GURU on the subject for the web development.

That made you sound a tad big headed.

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

Fire Fusion wrote:
ryant wrote:

I would consider being a moderator for the forum and a GURU on the subject for the web development.

That made you sound a tad big headed.

yeh thats what made me slightly defensive lol

hcgtv, i didn't think thats what ryant meant i thought he just mean integrating it with your site and stuff not with outher packages, however maybe this would be better under punres.org better to keep stuff together as much as possible

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

i think its a good idea to get a forum to talk about intergrating gallerys and CMS's

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Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

no no my bad.. lol i wasnt saying i was a GURU.. i was saying that having a message board designed on development of forums and web design in Search Engine Optimization format will bring in GURU's and other fanatics to join in on the discussions.  I was only saying I would moderate the board so we could get the ball rolling...wasnt trying to battle anybodies judgement..... sorry if i was misleading...

Ryan Thompson

Home Decor Lighting - The SEO Project

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Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

Any interest in starting a PunBB integration forum?

I would help moderate it with ryant.

I'm integrating Nucleus, what I learn in the process can be used by any CMS or blog.

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

would this be better as a subsection of punres?

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Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

Connorhd wrote:

would this be better as a subsection of punres?

Well, punres is for mods and as such it runs a modifed PunBB forum.

I'm more inclined to using plain vanilla PunBB and interfacing via CMS/Blog plugins, extensions or whatever mechanism a particular software project has to offer.

Aside from plugins to interface the users and posts, we're also looking at CSS tweaks to embed the forum if one is inclined. For this, maybe Paul would like to lend his expertise of PunBB's markup.

The interest is here, I've read many posts about interfacing PunBB. I don't mind helping Geeklog, Mambo or any other project for that matter, the intent is to grow the PunBB community.

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

ok cool, i wasn't trying to convince you not to make the site i was just wondering if it had enough interest to require an entire new site but it sounds great and i would probably be active on it wink (and maybe even help people tongue)

on a side note i don't get what a SEO is or why this would be one lol, or why ryant is a GURU

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Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

Connorhd wrote:

on a side note i don't get what a SEO is or why this would be one lol, or why ryant is a GURU

I think SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

Over the course of my IT career, I've learned that being a GURU is fleeting. I used to be an RPG II Guru, then I had to become an RPG III Guru, and by the time RPG IV came out, I had already switched to PC's. Show me one of my RPG programs from way back when and I'll have to scratch my head to figure out what I was doing.

So if ryant says he's a Guru, then let's take advantage of his expertise, cause it's fleeting.

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

hcgtv wrote:

I think SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

i dunno if i'm being stupid but i still don't know what it is/does :(

15 (edited by D9r 2005-02-13 06:15)

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

Search Engine Optimization is the art of designing your site so that it gets the best possible rankings in search engines.  SEO includes everything from choosing the optimum domain name, what text goes in the title bar, what text goes in the description meta tag, the first visible text on the page, what links are found on the main page, etc, etc, etc.  SEO is a big deal, trust me.

I think in this case bryant might be talking about how to integrate the forum into a regular website (not necessarily a cms or gallery - any old site).  The common issues involved are having the forum code insert helpful text in the title bar on each page - actually it looks like punbb already does this.  Another good thing for SEO is to convert the urls from query strings to search-engine-friendly format.

Here's a discussion on SEO at the hiveminds forum:
(they're good folks even though they still use phpbb wink)
http://hiveminds.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2523

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

ahh ok, although how does this site have anything to do with SEO - http://www.homedecorlighting.com/ (thats what confused me)

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

I'm trying to take an SEO approach to PunBB right now, so I'd be into it.  There is a good SEO article/crtique of phpbb that would give us a place to start

1.The first thing I am trying to do is change the Last Posts on the index.php to use the title of last post rather than the date as the link text. This places potential keywords, and words are always search friendlier than. It also makes keywords on the front page change regularly which I know google likes.

2. According to phpbb's own admission, google has devaluated any page called "viewforum.php" and "viewtopic.php" meaning they take the score they would normally give each page, and subtract from it because the page is titled viewtopic.php, so the page names should be changed at some point.

3. Another could be to try and derive keywords from forum titles and topic titles, removing "and, or, to, the" etc., and putting commas between the words, and placing it in the headers.  I've done a little experimenting, and I've found that when a link such as viewforum.php?topic=xxx is indexed by google, if the keywords, title, and description change, it will index more pages.

I know there are other, simpler mods, I just wish I could think of them right now :-)

18 (edited by dot 2005-03-05 18:50)

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

mysterioz,

Making sure punbb is search engine friendly as you are talking about really needs to be done and should be a top priority. It's very important. Please keep us updated on your work...

One thing that would be very useful is to be able to change the way the title is automatically added to posts. Right now the title of the entire bulletin board appears first , then there is a backslash /, and then the subject of the posts comes next. For example, the title of this post title up in the upper left hand corner is:

PunBB.org Forums / Let's Start an SEO and Web Debelopment Forum...

What would be very handy for search engine optimization is to be able to have the option of using the Forum Name in the title of the post rather than the bulletin board title. If that could be accomplished, then the title of this post would be:

Integration / Let's Start an SEO and Web Debelopment Forum...

What this allows one to do is name the forums in such a way that they are specific for search engine keywords. For example, I might have a web site about fruit. I could then name three forums - apples, oranges and banannas. Those key words would appear in the title of the posts, and that would zero in the search engines specifically to those key words. That would be very handy for SEO.

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Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

I'd be interested in contributing to some SEO ideas/hacks/mods, I have a few ideas also, mostly along the lines of mysterioz's post#17

Currently working on a Nucleus/PunBB setup & will be to the SEO stage soon.

cheers

20 (edited by miowpro 2005-04-23 01:11)

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

i would be very interested in this too. being an active website SEO'er i would like to see how you are going to do this.

if your going to go all out on this, i would recommend at looking as the meta tags too ie like Dot was saying about having the forum subject in the title like:

Integration / Let's Start an SEO and Web Debelopment Forum...

you could also take the forum description "Integration of PunBB with a CMS, Blog, Gallery or HTML site. " and add that to the meta tag description and keywords

i will keep looking at this post and help in anyway i can. im not that great at php but i know a good deal about SEO

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Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

Hey mysterioz smile

you made any progress?

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

[First post - excellent script, Rickard, Paul + anyone else responsible smile]

Surprised to see no meta tags in default install - pretty essential for SEO.

I'm working on my first PunBB and started on SEO for it:

* header.php, after

<title><?php echo $page_title ?></title>

add

<meta name="description" content="<?php echo $page_title ?>." />
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword1 keyword2 <?php echo $page_title ?>" />

It's not a 'perfect' solution but at least gets keywords in the right place.  One improvement would be to output "description" with $page_title and a few characters from opening post (if viewtopic).

* to prevent indexing of unnecessary content, includes/functions.php add 'rel="nofollow"':

    if ($pun_config['o_rules'] == '1')
        $links[] = '<li id="navrules"><a href="misc.php?action=rules" rel="nofollow">'.$lang_common['Rules'].'</a>';

    if ($pun_user['is_guest'])
    {
        if ($pun_user['g_search'] == '1')
            $links[] = '<li id="navsearch"><a href="search.php" rel="nofollow">'.$lang_common['Search'].'</a>';

        $links[] = '<li id="navregister"><a href="register.php" rel="nofollow">'.$lang_common['Register'].'</a>';
        $links[] = '<li id="navlogin"><a href="login.php" rel="nofollow">'.$lang_common['Login'].'</a>';

* to prevent indexing of unnecessary content, index.php add 'rel="nofollow"':

                <dd><?php echo $lang_index['Newest user'] ?>: <a href="profile.php?id=<?php echo $stats['last_user']['id'] ?>" rel="nofollow"><?php echo pun_htmlspecialchars($stats['last_user']['username']) ?></a></dd>

* to prevent indexing of unnecessary content, footer.php add 'rel="nofollow"':

        if ($pun_user['g_search'] == '1')
        {
            echo "\n\t\t\t".'<dl id="searchlinks" class="conl">'."\n\t\t\t\t".'<dt><strong>'.$lang_common['Search links'].'</strong></dt><dd><a href="search.php?action=show_24h" rel="nofollow">'.$lang_common['Show recent posts'].'</a></dd>'."\n";
            echo "\t\t\t\t".'<dd><a href="search.php?action=show_unanswered" rel="nofollow">'.$lang_common['Show unanswered posts'].'</a></dd>'."\n\t\t\t".'</dl>'."\n";
        }

* move 'board title' to end of <title> in viewforum.php and viewtopic.php (keywords in title should be placed first for SEO + I think it's nicer for users):
viewforum.php:

$page_title = pun_htmlspecialchars($cur_forum['forum_name'].' - '.$pun_config['o_board_title']);

viewtopic.php:

$page_title = pun_htmlspecialchars($cur_topic['subject'].' - '.$pun_config['o_board_title']);

All we need now are clean URLs! big_smile

"The invisible and the non-existent look very similar."

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

first of all many search engines don't use meta tags at all including google, are they really important?

as for rel="nofollow" that is already sorted with
<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
on certain pages

clean urls are done in 1.3

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

meta keywords - probably not used, but why take the chance? wink
meta description - definitely used, definitely important

Ah, I hadn't spotted the meta ROBOTS.  It should probably be added to 'user list' as well.  Although meta ROBOTS achieves a similar result, 'rel="nofollow"' is better because the bot doesn't need to load the page to know it shouldn't be indexed.  Also, meta ROBOTS should use 'noindex,nofollow', otherwise (e.g.) 'not registered yet' and 'forgotten password' would be indexed even though the login page is not.

Yeah, I knew 1.3 is adding clean URLs.  Looking forward to that.

"The invisible and the non-existent look very similar."

Re: Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum.....

out of interest, who uses meta description?

its better with noindex, follow cos then links are followed, those pages you said would not be indexed as they also contain the noindex tag