Lets Start an SEO and Web Development Forum..... (Page 1 of 2)

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

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.

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

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

would this be better as a subsection of punres?

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 (and maybe even help people )

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

meta keywords - probably not used, but why take the chance?
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.