Will Munny Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 Upgraded to 3.1.4 and now there's another board name hardcoded into the H1, I think in a core file and I can't find it. I didn't notice it and it's started killing my traffic/SEO... I URGENTLY need to get this useless, very damaging boardname in every H1 removed. Can someone please help me find the right file and area to edit. Really, IPS needs to stop making critical SEO changes like this without some kind of warning or discussion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Munny Posted January 14, 2011 Author Share Posted January 14, 2011 OK, I've found the fix myself... Can someone please tell me if this fix is safe... Open: /admin/applications/forums/modules_public/forums/topics.php$this->registry->output->setTitle( $this->topic['title'] . ' - ' . $this->settings['board_name']); Change to: $this->registry->output->setTitle( $this->topic['title'] ); I really think there should be some kind of discussion or consultation before changes like this are made between versions. I now have to wait for search engines to re-index with the title h1s as they were before I upgraded... but it could be months for rankings to restore. Search engines don't like to see H1 tags changing every few days, it looks spammy or black hat i.e. it appears as though the forum owner is trying to manipulate rank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Munny Posted January 14, 2011 Author Share Posted January 14, 2011 It's not so much the H1... rather, the fact that it's going into the <title> tag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 If you just upgraded, I can promise you that the contents of your title or H1 tag have not had absolutely any effect on your traffic. The title and h1 tag can affect how google sees your pages, but it takes time for them to reindex your site and update their search engine listings. This is not something that happens immediately after an upgrade. And, for the record, the h1 tag has been the same since 3.0.0 (which was released in June of 2009). This isn't a recent change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Munny Posted January 14, 2011 Author Share Posted January 14, 2011 Hi bfarber, thanks for commenting. I upgraded a few days ago and I only noticed when I checked the reason traffic was dying off and noticed the board title in the listings. I'd previously removed the extra board name from the globaltemplte, as follows...<h1>{$this->settings['board_name']}: {$header_items['title']}</h1> Becomes... <h1>{$header_items['title']}</h1> And, for the record, the h1 tag has been the same since 3.0.0 (which was released in June of 2009). This isn't a recent change. Are you absolutely sure about that? My upgrade was from 3.1.2 --> 3.1.4 and this then created an new reference to the board name in both the H1 and <title> tags, and it wasn't there before. It was coded into the topics.php as in my OP. I would have noticed if it was there in 3.1.2. Maybe we're getting our wires crossed over the <title> element. BTW, without any edits or adjustments, the H1 tags look like this... <h1>Example Forum: Example Topic - Example Forum</h1> Why on earth do we need the board named twice in the H1? Maybe the skins were changed between these versions and I missed the change perhaps??? Can you confirm my edit in the second post above is safe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat B Posted January 14, 2011 Share Posted January 14, 2011 It's not going to break anything, if that's what you mean. We can't provide official support for file edits of course. If it is in fact spitting into that tag twice, that seems like something you should file in the bug tracker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Munny Posted January 15, 2011 Author Share Posted January 15, 2011 OK I'll start a bug report in the tracker. It's a long time since I've been active on the IPS forums, but this <title>/<H1> issue got me posting again and I'm back to pester you and be a generally cranky customer..... Cranky customers make the product better. After all, IPS got their SEO act together because of cranky SEO geek customers like me :) Yes, I just wanted a staff members to comment on my file edit in case I'd inadvertently broken something... thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 My response about the <h1> tag ONLY applies to the H1 tag. The title tag has changed a bit between versions, however the <h1> tag really hasn't. I just loaded up 3.0.5 and verified this is the code in 3.0.5<h1>{$this->settings['board_name']}: {$header_items['title']}</h1> I'm pretty sure we have plans to improve this in 3.2 or beyond, but the h1 tag hasn't changed since 3.0.0 really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.