vBulletin mod_rewrite

My site has well over 300 forums and subforums so the idea of making an entry for each one is no good...

Wouldn't it be easier just to give the forums numeric ids and use modrewrite to redirect based upon that information so you didn't have to keep updating htaccess?

Yes, here at DaniWeb we have over 90 forums, and therefore we use numeric IDs, which eliminates creating a custom line for each forum in the .htaccess file. However, named forum URLs (especially ones which are keyword-rich) are very good for SEO purposes.

Regardless, the following are the differences should one want to go about using numeric forum IDs:

Step One => not needed

Step Two => All instances should be replaced with:

<a href="forum$forum['forumid'].html">

instead of with

<a href="$forum['url'].html">

Step Six => not needed

Everything else would remain the same as the above tutorial.

I really liked the idea of the titles in the url so I played aroung with modrewite and came up with this:

RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)-(.*)\.html$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]

This tells modrewrite to forward any url fXID-XTEXT-.html to the forumdisplay.php?forumid=$XID url, this way you can have any text you want but since the ID is used in the URL, it is possible to use one rewrite rule for every forum.

To go along with this, you need to modify your forumbit templates to use the link

<a href="f$forum[forumid]-$forum[url].html">

No files need to be changed as far as I can recall.

So far I am testing this on a template that my users don't access so please confirm this works for you before putting it on a live site.

Thanks for the wonderful hack, I had limited spidering in the past and it worked wonders so I can only expect even better results from this deep spidering system.

Thanks so much Ted for your addition. At first glance, it looks like it should work fine. To everyone else out there, what Ted is proposing is that the URL look like this, given that forum #2 has the name DaniWeb Community: f2-daniweb-community.html - The forum system parses the forum id as 2 (hence no need for a loooong .htaccess) and the URL is still keyword rich.

Thanks for this fantastic hack, cscgal :)

I suppose this will work for VB3.0.3 and would you provide help if vBulletin releases a new version and this hack needs to be updated ?

This hack should work for all gold versions of vB 3. I'll offer as much assistance as I possibly can. However, I can't guarantee support for not-yet-released versions of vB as just last week my vBulletin license to the members area expired :) But there shouldn't be any problems anyways - and if they are, just give any of the great guys over here a hollar.

Since I can't seem to edit my post, I have a little update... if you use my code please change [L] to [R] in your htaccess file which redirect to a url instead of naming the page to that url. This is less optimal for your SEO placement but it won't harm things like the quick style chooser which rely on a dynamic url existing.

Thanks cscgal

Ted, if i didnt allow style changes then i should continue to use [L] ?

Yes, [L] is much better than [R] for SEO reasons. By using [R], the user is actually physically redirected to the php? URL. I don't enable style changes, and have never ran into any problems with any other forum feature.

Ted, I will look into modifying the code that generates the style dropdown so that everyone can use [L].

I see, btw is there a demo of this hack somewhere ? Or is this forum already the working example without any extra hacks :)

Also, i noticed announcements are still using the normal URL ?

Yes, I never bothered to rewrite announcements. I will in a bit though :) This forum is a demo of this hack - another example is a forum I designed and coded, www.mod-rewrite.com/forum/

The quickstyle chooser is run via javascript using the following code:

function switch_styleid(selectobj)
{
	var styleid = selectobj.options[selectobj.selectedIndex].value;

	if (styleid == "")
	{
		return;
	}

	var url = new String(window.location);
	var fragment = new String("");

	// get rid of fragment
	url = url.split("#");

	// deal with the fragment first
	if (url[1])
	{
		fragment = "#" + url[1];
	}

	// deal with the main url
	url = url[0];

	// remove styleid=x& from main bit
	if (url.indexOf("styleid=") != -1 && is_regexp)
	{
		re = new RegExp("styleid=\\d+&?");
		url = url.replace(re, "");
	}

	// add the ? to the url if needed
	if (url.indexOf("?") == -1)
	{
		url += "?";
	}
	else
	{
		// make sure that we have a valid character to join our styleid bit
		lastchar = url.substr(url.length - 1);
		if (lastchar != "&" && lastchar != "?")
		{
			url += "&";
		}
	}
	window.location = url + "styleid=" + styleid + fragment;
}

I have no idea how to make it work properly so for now I must stick with [R] flags.

Cool hack there, i think i shall use it on my forum and let the googlies in :cheesy:

Thanks for sharing this, I just got it setup on my forums. I'm using V3.0.3 and found a couple of the instructions didnt work for me.

Heres what I changed.

In step two it asks to replace all with the following:

<a href="$forum['url'].html">

But I got an error so had to change to:

<a href="$forum[url].html">

In Step four Part one I had to use:

<a href="lastpostinthread$thread[threadid].html">

Instead of the instructed:

<a href="lastpostinthread[threadid].html">

All works fine now.

I also used the rewrite rule Teds posted:

RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)-(.*).html$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]

But as my .htaccess file is in my forum directory I had to remove the /'s to make it work:

RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)-(.*).html$ forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]

Thanks again :mrgreen:

The change you made in Step 4 Part 1 would make it stop working?

It may be the way I posted it:

<a href="lastpostinthread[threadid].html">

That is the code as instructed in the first post.

I had to chage it to this:

<a href="lastpostinthread$thread[threadid].html">

Also, theres no reply with quote buttons in any of the posts apart from the first post of this thread. :?:

Yes, that makes much more sense! As to your question, that's because there are limited features available to the DaniWeb tutorial threads. The idea is that all replies be comments / responses to the original article.

I've been testing this on a new install, but for some reason I have the simple issue of "forumdisplay" is showing as the normal dynamic link, rather than the HTML form. It's probably a small mistake, but if there are any pointers to which part of the instructions I possibly messed up on, that would be most appreciated.

Look at all of the templates in the FORUMHOME template group and replace all occurrences of <a href="forumdisplay.php?..."> with <a href="$forum['url'].html">

I tried this and joined here after your post at seoforums. I need your help. There were a few changes from your vb 3.0.1 to vb 3.0.3.

I put the changs in that you states through your steps. First off thanks for the post and the mod, it is outstanding. I was wondering if you could help me! Is there anyway that you would be willing to look at my test forums and tell me what is wrong with what I did

Mike

http://www.sportsrant.com/testforums

this is what my htaccess file looks like!

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteRule ^thread([0-9]+).html$ showthread.php?t=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^lastpostinthread([0-9]+).html$ showthread.php?goto=lastpost&t=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^newpostinthread([0-9]+).html$ showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)-(.*).html$ forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]

acutally ma'am i was able to get this to work! It works perfectly and this is an awesome modification. The only question that I have is
when you click on this link (example)

http://www.sportsrant.com/forums/newpostinthread3503.html

then it should go to that URL, instead is goes to the regular php post, but it goes to:

http://www.sportsrant.com/forums/showthread.php?p=58619#post58619

Is there anyway to change that also!!

Mike

I sent this email to another VB member here to see one problem with this tweak

he only thing that gets me about this is from the forums home page! (EXAMPLE)

This link here: http://www.sportsrant.com/forums/newpostinthread3501.html takes you to the latest thread like it should: http://www.sportsrant.com/forums/showthread.php?p=58579#post58579 and I do not believe this is good for SEO! If you go into that forum, even on your site, and click on http://www.sportsrant.com/forums/thread3501.html which is the same post and actually goes to the thread. Do you understand where I am coming from! Can this be fixed or tweaked to work, there has to be away. It will make it even more SEO!!

The current way of doing things is where the links to newpostinthreadXXX.html and lastpostinthreadXXX.html redirect to their showthread.php? counterparts. The following mini-tutorial will fix that:

STEP ONE

Add the following line to your .htaccess file:

RewriteRule ^post([0-9]+).html$ showthread.php?p=$1 [L]

STEP TWO

All of the following changes need to be made to the showthread.php file:

exec_header_redirect("showthread.php?$session[sessionurl_js]p=$getlastpost[postid]$highlightwords#post$getlastpost[postid]");

should be replaced with

exec_header_redirect("post$getlastpost[postid].html#post$getlastpost[postid]");

exec_header_redirect("showthread.php?$session[sessionurl_js]p=$posts[postid]$highlightwords#post$posts[postid]");

should be replaced with

exec_header_redirect("post$posts[postid].html#post$posts[postid]");

exec_header_redirect("showthread.php?$session[sessionurl_js]t=$threadinfo[threadid]&goto=lastpost$highlightwords");

should be replaced with

exec_header_redirect("lastpostinthread$threadinfo[threadid].html");

exec_header_redirect("showthread.php?$session[sessionurl_js]t=$thread[pollid]");

should be replaced with

exec_header_redirect("thread$thread[pollid].html");

$firstunread = 'showthread.php?' . $session['sessionurl'] . 't=' . $threadid . '&goto=newpost';

should be replaced with

$firstunread = 'newpostinthread' . $threadid . '.html';

that latest fix is the perfect fit and everything works as you posted. I REALLY appreciate your dedication and hard work. For people that want to have SEO type forums, You're an angel!!

Mike :mrgreen:

Thank you so so much for your kind words. And thank you for your generous donation to DaniWeb, as well!

Wow amazing work. I'll surely try this out when I get the chance.

Thanks! :)

Just got it done on www.sgwebhostingtalk.com , after some editting here and there since it didnt work very smooth for me. But still thanks ALOT dani ! :twisted:

Excelent modification, congratulations :D

But :( i have a problem >.<

In my online appears Unknown Location for example:

Unknown
/foro/thread26600.html <-----

or

Unknown
/foro/thread9721.html <----

Any idea to how fix this problem?