Google friendly PHPBB

Static URLs for the masses :-)

[lavapies]

Hi folks,

I was reading threads here a while back from people discussing if it's possible to have static URLs with any of the free bulletin boards out there.

Well, I did some research on this - and thought a few would be inetersted in this.

I found this thread on phpbb (think this URL post is appropriate no?)

[phpbb.com...]

It shows a hack for phpbb that will convert all your ".php?t=" into nice Google friendly "t-1.html" type URLs

I couldn't get it to work immediately, but with the help of a super nice guy at phpbb (one of the developers) I have it up and running now and it works like a dream. Check out site in my profile and goto /forum/ to see how it works.

So until Brett starts selling his customised code for WebmasterWorld.. some might like to try this as a stop-gap :-)

P.S. All credit to hsim at phpbb for creating the code and being nice enough to help a poor lamer out installing it!

[BryantStevens]

I can't believe no one has commented on this yet. Thanks for the link. I think it is extremely important for people running message boards and communities that archive a large amount of valuable data.

I can't even recall how many times I have found an obscure piece of important information through a Google search that returned a message board discussion.

That link also discusses the similiar activity for other message boards.

[Ready To Roll]

I implemented the code changes from that forum onto my forum. Seems extremely useful, but I'm still trying to figure out how to save the postings that already exist on my forum. For example, it renames a Google unfriendly page (http://www.forum.com/viewforum.php?f=1) to a Google friendly page (http://www.forum.com/f-1001.php), but these new pages will now show my 404 default page, since the files are not automatically renamed. I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong; I think it has something to do with the subdir structure of the site.
Once I correct the problem, I look forward to my individual forum pages being indexed.

[NeedScripts]

Yup, the hack is working great :) I only wish, they include this as one of their standard features.

[lavapies]

Ready to roll... did you change all paths to your template and style sheets to absolute paths? You need to do this for the images to work.

Also if you use avarats you will need to modify code to absolute paths also (although I'm still working on this).

If you are getting a 404, most likely you haven't put the right refs in your htaccess file. You need to save a copy of all php files in root of forum directory without php extension and then upload a copy to the server (remembering to keep all you php extension files there) Then setup requests for your files in htaccess without php extension to be parsed as php files. That should get rid of 404/

And yes. it would be nice if this mod was posted as an official phpbb mod :-)