Nofollow Attribute

[Rοb]

Simple suggestion, add the rel="nofollow" attribute to all exterior URL's in posts & signatures :)

[Millar]

Not something I would say needed to be done, maybe an option in the ACP.

Not every forum owner in the world is paramount about not loosing PR.

I am, but I know not everyone else is.

[Katsuma]

To ALL might be overkill. What happens when you want to link to your other forums? Hmm?

[Rοb]

Lets face it, the vast majority of URL's posted on forums aren't likely to be the board owner posting links to other sites he/she owns!

Besides, the attribute isn't bad, it is simply saying you cannot vouch for the site being linked to :)

[¤Neville¤]

The nofollow tag is widely misunderstood. In a nutshell, it tells search engine bots that you did not have editorial influence over this link being added to your website and it will not pass Pagerank to that link. The link is still followed by the bots but you have some protection from spammers etc.

Sources/classes/bbcode/class_bbcode_core.php

Find:

        return ( isset($url['st']) ? $url['st'] : '' ) . "<a href=\"".$url['html']."\" target=\"_blank\">".$show."</a>" . $url['end'];
    }

Replace:

        return ( isset($url['st']) ? $url['st'] : '' ) . "<a href=\"".$url['html']."\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">".$show."</a>" . $url['end'];
    }

[Rοb]

Thanks but this is a suggestion thread, it wasn't mean't to be viewed upon as modification help.

I am not misunderstanding what the tag/attribute does, i am simply suggesting it be implemented within certain areas of IPB as standard.

This is now default in most blogging software, the same should apply to top-level/high-quality forum software :)

Q:

What types of links should get this attribute?

A: We encourage you to use the rel="nofollow" attribute anywhere that users can add links by themselves, including within comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists. Comment areas receive the most attention, but securing every location where someone can add a link is the way to keep spammers at bay.

Ta :P

[¤Neville¤]

Ah, lol misunderstood. Yes i think it's a good idea, should be done.

[Strange_Will]

IMHO: Being as people have linked many times to my spoiler code, I'd like to get pagerank for it. It's the least you can do for my free code. ;)

[Frontpage]

Thanks for the tip!

[ErwinB]

I've made a quick modification for this a long time ago for IPB v1.3.x. But I've never improved it. It should be set for groups (eg for guests). This could be a good feature, but to be efficient the admin must have the possibility to set it with precision. A distinction have to be made between internal and external links, groups option (I think we can consider that a link posted by an admin or moderator can be considered as 'sure'). So this is a good feature, but not easy to implement efficiently.

[RawkBob]

rel="nofollow" doesn't stop the spammers posting, prevention is better than cure and all, so i'd rather have a system stopping the spam getting as far as posting a link than letting a spam link be posted which is still an annoyance to the users.

rel="nofollow" is pointless as it has obviously had no effect in stopping spam bots. (have a look at the stats, spam over the last month or two has increased 10 fold... and it doesn't look to be slowing anytime soon!)

[Frontpage]

The goal of 'nofollow' is not to 'stop spam'.

It is to protect your board from being downgraded in valuable search position for the crime of link spamming.

Setting 'nofollow' as an attribute in the <a href> will signal to search engines that you do not wish to have your websites reputation associated with a dubious link.

[bluenote]

[bluenote]

[RawkBob]

http://www.itst.org/nonofollow/

[VelvetElvis]

you can always use robots.txt to keep google out of specific areas

[ErwinB]

you can always use robots.txt to keep google out of specific areas

We're talking about the posts contents. Keeping bots away from the content of your board doesn't make sense.

[Nils]

[RawkBob]

Of course this wouldn't directly prevent spammers from posting their URLs, but if it became known that IPB used this attribute by default, most spammers wouldn't have anything to gain from it anymore, so they would probably stop spamming IPBs by themselves.

Wordpress implemented this ages ago and I haven't seen a slow down at all.. infact, it's still rising...

[Strange_Will]

Well there goes my ranking :(

[VelvetElvis]

The "best" approach is about finding that sweet spot between prevention and reaction in a way that doesn't hinder legitimate users too much. This sweet spot won't be the same for every context, audience, and implementation and it won't always be sweet either. This is why it's important to have this as an option and the admin can decide how best to implement it in their specific context.

I did some fiddling in google. 98% of the inlinks to my site are marked nofollow. Nearly 200 of them. All were legitimate links, IMHO. Things like where someone quotes material from a post on my board in a blog comment and links to it as a citation. There are others where someone gives me a link like in a blogrole but doesn't know how to disable their nofollow plugin so they actualy have their whole blogroll set nofollow. It's absurd.

[Nils]

[Strange_Will]

If the only link to your site comes from your own signature you're doing something wrong... signatures were never intended to be free ad spaces anyway.

Well no, I've had people many times link to my site over finding code they like, suggesting that the staff uses it for whatever they need. The least credit you can give me for free code is a little page rank bump.