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Slov 
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 Topic: Upgrade report
Posted: 02 February 2006 at 10:22pm |
Hello, Bruce!
We finally upgraded our forums and I want to share my experience. We have modified forum a little for best search engine uppearance. Here you can see the result: http://www.helicontech.com/forum/
We have used our second product LinkFreeze to make forum URLs looks static without modifying forum code (actually I had to rename two files). Also we have changed pages scroll since SE cannot navigate lists (consider it for future versions). Plus some other minor modifications.
Also we have used ISAPI_Rewrite to support our old forum links and Google references. Here is the old link example - http://www.helicontech.com/forum/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=2&TopicID=4300&ThreadPage=1 as you can see it is still working. And here is a Google search example: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.helicontech.com+threads as you can see it returns running links.
Tomorrow I will remove PN parameter form forum_posts.asp since it makes multiple entries of same page in Google, but I can confirm that new URLs are much cheaper.
I understand that our products are mostly commercial and this post can be considered as advertising, but if you are interested we can donate a license of LinkFreeze to you and help set it up for WebWiz forum. Surely if your hosting suport for ISAPI filter installation.
Edited by Slov - 03 February 2006 at 11:05am
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WebWiz-Bruce
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Posted: 03 February 2006 at 11:16am |
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We use our own servers so ISAPI installation is not a problem.
However, as this is a demo version of Web Wiz Forums I would rather keep it the same as the download versions so that people testing the forum can see what they will get.
If this forum uses software to re-write the URL's many users will ask why they don't have it in their own forum, and to make the forum as simple to use as possiable I make a big point to keep things generic so that Web Wiz Forums will run on as many servers as possiable without anything being installed on the server.
I find that Google, MSN, etc. all index this forum on a daily basis without any problems, so from my point of view I can not see any advantage in removing querystrings from URL's.
However, I'm sure that many users will like such a tool and it maybe worth posting a mod for this in the mod forum.
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WebWiz-Bruce
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Posted: 03 February 2006 at 11:19am |
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Also, incase it will make a difference, the next version 8 beta 2, will append a unique session ID to every URL if cookies are not detected on the users machine. This is simular to what phpBB uses.
I'm not sure if this would make a difference to the way your mod would work.
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Slov
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Posted: 03 February 2006 at 12:35pm |
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Your site has very high PR - 8/10, that is why Google indexes even parametrized links here. But as more parameters are in URL then less PR it gives to the pages and thus will not go deeper into the forum database. Also page scroll could be more SE firendly.
Using our software does not need change anything in the forum engine so it will be still running on any server with or without our components installed. But from what I can see this forum can be much improved for best SE uppearance, regardless of the usage of our components.
As for session identifiers - doing so will spam search engines by a number of page copies. To avoind this problem you need to allow sessionless guest access and add session identifier only to logged on users.
I will post my proposition by a private mail.
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WebWiz-Bruce
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Posted: 03 February 2006 at 12:55pm |
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I have already thought of this and if the connection is detected as being a search engine robot session ID's are not used.
Search Engine detection is already built into Version 8 and is used for a number of features thoughtout the forum.
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Slov
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Posted: 03 February 2006 at 1:02pm |
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This is not a best choice since most search engines can check site by identifying itself as a ordinary client browser and can even ban entire site if found any differences.
Sessionless guest access would be much better.
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WebWiz-Bruce
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Posted: 03 February 2006 at 1:17pm |
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Without sessions many features of the forum sinmply will not work, so not much of an option.
However, if users want their guests to be able to use less features then they can disable the Guest sessions.
For most users though they wil have cookies enabled so will never see the session ID which will be held in a cookie.
This has to be done to Web Wiz Forums as many users have problems with cookies and so simply can not use the forum.
Like security, SEO, is all about a comprimise between fuctionality and search engines indexing the page.
I think in this circumstance most users would place functionality over SEO, but for those who wish to place SEO first then the forum can always be modded.
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Slov
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Posted: 03 February 2006 at 1:55pm |
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Then you may simply disable URL session identifier feature for guests only. Or at least add this as an option.
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