URL Rewriting in the future ?

[cyann]

Hello,

Does the URL rewriting is expected in the next version of IPB?
For example, the URL http://www.mysite.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1391
become http://www.mysite.com/forum/the-keywords-in-title-1391.html

Thank you

[MindTooth]

It is called SEO. And this is a much wanted feature by many.

Birger :)

[Cool Surfer]

:rolleyes: yes we need this :rolleyes:

[Tony]

I don't think that i've seen until now a bulletin board software that have SEO integrated from "factory", if you want SEO for IP.Board get communitySEO .

[AndyAtHull]

I don't think IP will venture into this. Besides, CSEO is a good module to get this affect. No need to copy.

[Mat Barrie]

[quote name='Ton

[Bobsuch]

^+1.

Don't see why a mod should be more expensive/the same price as IPB itself.

[WoLeRiNe`]

^+1.

Don't see why a mod should be more expensive/the same price as IPB itself.

-1
I have gain this price with CSEO...
Without CSEO, i was get just 100 unique hit per day and 10-20$ per month from GOOGLE ADS.
Now with CSEO, i get more then 2,5k hit per day and more then 100$ per month.
And these(unique hit and revenue) augment :wub:

So with CSEO i gain more revenue and hit...

[Tarun]

An INTEGRATED SEO > having to install a mod with every release.

[WoLeRiNe`]

so need integration... all mods :D

[MindTooth]

[b]-1[/b]

I have gain this price with CSEO...

Without CSEO, i was get just 100 unique hit per day and 10-20$ per month from GOOGLE ADS.

Now with CSEO, i get more then 2,5k hit per day and more then 100$ per month.

And these(unique hit and revenue) augment :wub:

So with CSEO i gain more revenue and hit...

I don't see why that is a reason to give the suggestion "-1"? Since if IPS were to add SEO, I would imagine that they did their research before creating a SEO system for IP.Board/IP.Nexus, etc. So the solution would be good enough...

Birger :)

[WoLeRiNe`]

And the price will be $249 minimum :)
If it can be an option before purchase as IPB=$149 and IPB+SEO=$249, ok no problem...

[Mat Barrie]

And the price will be $249 minimum :)

If it can be an option before purchase as IPB=$149 and IPB+SEO=$249, ok no problem...

That's the most ridiculously stupid idea I ever heard. Why are you trying to say what price IPS will or will not charge for something?

[WoLeRiNe`]

That's the most ridiculously stupid idea I ever heard. Why are you trying to say what price IPS will or will not charge for something?

You can trying it, because i have CSEO. For me, no problem.
You try to say if IPS will include or not :P

[alj]

+1

it will be great future to gain also
vBulletin start to add some SEO
to there board system
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=249460
like Thread Tagging and Bookmarks tools

[Mark]

So long as CommunitySEO is more expensive than IPB, it's not a viable option.

^+1.

Don't see why a mod should be more expensive/the same price as IPB itself.

Just because it's not a viable option for you doesn't mean it's not a viable option period. I would happily pay the asking price and more for that mod, and regularly charge that price, and even double that price for custom mods.

@TurXaliM: :rolleyes: Yes, it would be a lot of work, and although I agree with you that it is worth paying the extra money for the SEO functionality, I don't think IPS would raise the prices with the addition of new features. That is, after all, what we pay the renewal for.

[/offtopic]

I think IPB should incorporate friendly URLs and other SEO options in. There's no reason anyone would *not* want it.
Just because something is a mod doesn't mean it should always continue to be a mod and IPB has in the past added features that were previously mods.

[Digi]

The biggest problem with putting SEO innately in a product is because the SEO method changes so frequently. Once people like Google see that others are taking advantages of "loopholes" or "features" in ways that they should not, things get flipped on their side and it breaks most of the (commonly known) SEO methods. I'm not saying that IPS should add SEO innately, but they shouldn't try to go full bore with it at all.

[MindTooth]

You can see SEO in many ways. Just make the URL more SEO-friendly, is not a gigant step that will make Google change their search. Compared to the links today.

Birger :)

[Digi]

Pretty sure that's what I said... ;)

[bfarber]

I've refrained from chiming in, because I don't know the plans at this stage.

However I must say, my biggest problem with URL-rewriting isn't to do with whether Google changes their indexing methods or anything like that. It's purely going to be down to support. Rewriting is largely meant for Apache, but there's IIS, Lightspeed, Lighttpd, Nginx, and any other number of webservers out there. You have to have the rewriting modules installed (mod_rewrite for Apache is free, but I don't know about the others, or whether they come with the module or it has to be installed separately, and so on), and ultimately what I think we'll run into is a lot of customers who can't use rewriting for one reason or another and thinking our product is defective because there's a feature that "doesn't work". They won't care that it doesn't work because of their server configuration - they'll just see that it "doesn't work" and that's what they'll communicate to others when discussing IPB.

I see it as a sticky situation. Sure, it would mostly work, and in other cases it's probable a knowledgeable user could get it to work. But what about everyone else?

[FCB-Mo]

Well why don't you make the URL re-writing optional which can be switched on and off in the Admin Panel and then make sure there is something which says that the URL rewriter will only function on Apache servers?

I mean you already have an Apache only feature in IPB already (the .htaccess password protection of the ACP) so i don't see why this couldn't be the same.

[bfarber]

Well, there's things you "could" do, sure. ;) But that doesn't change the fact that it will only work in some setups, which isn't ideal for software that should work across the board when minimum requirements are met.

I mean, we don't want to require Apache (since it would only be required for this feature). Also, it would be hard to market "IPB has friendly urls" and then someone buy it for that reason only to realize they're on IIS and can't use the feature. What about users that have IIS and have a mod_rewrite equivalent module for IIS? If we block it to Apache only they wouldn't be able to use it? Or they'd see an irrelevant error message?

Disclaimer: I'm not making a decision or stating "why" we aren't doing this - I don't know if we will or won't (it has been discussed, of course). I'm just presenting some arguments as to why it's more difficult than it may seem to one user who does have an environment the feature would work under.

[Axel Wers]

I'm not saying that IPS should add SEO innately, but they shouldn't try to go full bore with it at all.

I agree.

Just make the URL more SEO-friendly, is not a gigant step that will make Google change their search. Compared to the links today.

Is this link unfriendly?

http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=269810

I think phpBB3 has link more unfriendly:

http://www.phpbb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=13485

I like IPB links, they are easy for me, but it's only my opinion, I am SEO-n00b.

[William Burdine]

Seems like there are a lot of SEO noobs for this discussion.

So let me define
URL Rewriting or Mod Rewriting is done at the WebServer level usually Apache only as IIS server don't natively support this, but this leads to SEF (next)

SEF = Search Engine Friendly, turns "http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=269810&st=20" in to something like "http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=URL_Rewriting_ in_ the_ future". The idea here is to allow search engines to catalog url strings with actual meanings, yes it is part of SEO, but different.

and lastly
SEO = Search Engine Optimization is the combination of SEF, sitemaps, key words, descriptions, alt tags for images, tag clouds, internal linking, external linking, marketing, on and on and on. I highly suggest you go read SEOBook (google it) its worth the investment.

AND SPEAKING OF INVESTMENT I support Bfarber on this to a point. I use SubDreamer on my site (CMS) and it has the ability of using or not using mod_rewrite and the reason for this is mod_rewrite is NOT installed and configured on every Apache web server out there.

It makes sense to me to offer mod_rewrite as a built in option, but have IP.B test the server during install and turn it on in the software if enabled on the web server, if not give an alert and maybe its time to change servers or perhaps hosts.

The SEF is very beneficial to dynamic sites that use databases to hold content as I stated earlier it helps search engines categorize URL meanings, which will always be part of SEO and will most likely never change. What will change is how search engines relate the url string to the header tags, key words, description and content.

As for fully integrating CSEO and IPB I am against that and agree with Bfarber, enough changes in SEO its better to let each company really focus on each product.

As to why CSEO is more expensive, SEO is the new up and coming Internet business. With the Internet becoming cluttered with spam at a exponential rate, SEO helps filter out what people are really searching for. Not every site builds around SEO and there are no hard set guidelines as these are industry trade secrets in each search engine camp and will never be released. The only thing you can do is make base line charts, make a change and see how it charts with your web analyzer of choice. You will NEVER hit #1 position on every key word you have in your site either, so don't try and don't pay someone who says they can....best to focus intently on your own content, build a 'sitemap.xml' file and submit it to the search engines.

I am not a SEO know it all, but it has been a major focus in my life for the past 5 months and is worth investigating. However doing SEO with forum software is a MAJOR challenge so using products like CSEO and the free product MinervaSEO will help greatly if you have a forum only site. It should at the very least (assuming you put effort in to it) pay for itself in advertising revenue or member traffic in 6 months or less. CSEO knows this, thats why their price structure is the way it is.

[Digi]

I see it as a sticky situation. Sure, it would mostly work, and in other cases it's probable a knowledgeable user could get it to work. But what about everyone else?

I totally understand that. I don't see a reason why IPB's main forum can't take on the same url patterns that lofi did by default, with the option to (basically) remove the /index.php?/ part from it with mod_rewrite (or with IIS "ISAPI REWRITE" is my personal choice). Simple things like that, and the others that help search engines properly cache pages (tagging and what not) shouldn't be all that huge of a deal.

Like I said before though, I'd never expect IPB to do the advanced SEO stuff (mainly for the reason's you've mentioned and because things change too quickly), but it doesn't hurt to do the simple things :) (probably would help CSEO reduce the number of edits too :whistle:)