Forum Pages and Dominic

[rogerd]

In at least one other forum dealing with forum software, users reported loss of many indexed pages in the last update. One post even included the note "People on WebmasterWorld are up in arms" :). Although I confess to not reading the giant update threads, I haven't seen discussion of this issue here. Is anyone seeing problems with forums, or particular forum software? Or is this angst due to the flipping of new and old databases, etc.? I haven't noticed a problem, but (like WebmasterWorld) I'm not using a major commercial product.

Personally, I like forum posts in SERPs. I often locate solutions for weird error messages, hard-to-find vendors, etc. But, paranoid that I am, I always worry about content that can be tied to a particular tool... like "powered by MightyBoard" on every page.

[ruserious]

I am using phpBB, our forums are about 11 months old. The number of forum-pages we have in the index did not change in the last months (over the last 3 I'd say it climbed). PR was relatively steady (-1 toolbar-PR, after the more-or-less overall pr drop). By adding a lot of non-forum static informational pages with other subdomains, the total pages from our site(s) climbed. The traffic that google is driving us has continued to increase like in the past.
I have nothing to complain about dominic, quite the opposite.

[rogerd]

That's encouraging, ruserious. I would guess that if forums were targeted for some reason, phpBB would be one of them. I'm seeing results as good as ever, but am switching to the software where the page drops were reported.

Have you had to hack phpBB very much to get it indexable, ruserious?