google and message board

will google pick up message from my message board

[chris]

hello, i have a message board on my website phpbb
and i want to know will google pick up and index the messages from my message board, because i want google to index the message board messages will it.

[SubZeroGTS]

search phpBB.com's forums for a thread about Google, it will give you the code you need to modify phpBB so it's Google-friendly

[mikeD]

what about Invision Board, anybody know how to make that google friendly, have about 400+ posts on my board and seems a waste that google can't pick them up.

[SubZeroGTS]

here's the general idea:

find the routine in the code which tacks on a session id to the URL and have it make sure the USER_AGENT environment variable does not contain the string 'Googlebot' before it does that. might wanna include some other popular bots too.

and keep links to topics on your site as simple as possible, only one or two variables if you can (i.e [domain.com...] )

[mrkarron]

Hello,
I am using PHPbb 2.0.4 and have had no success in removing the session_ids for search engines. The previous mods do not seem to work with this version. Anyone have an updated mod? There is no info on the current version that I can find on the PHPbb website forum.

Ron

[roneill]

Here is code to remove a guest session ID so that "guests" visiting the board will be able to browse without a session ID. It's not my code but I installed it and cruising through my forum I can view messages with the ID showing up. I do not know if googlebot can read or index the board now but I will find out next deepcrawl...

# 
#-----[ OPEN ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
includes/sessions.php 
# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
  // 
  // Does a session exist? 
  // 
# 
#-----[ BEFORE, ADD ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
 // Use the cookie user_id if available to pull basic user prefs. 
 $user_id = ( isset($sessiondata['userid']) )? intval($sessiondata['userid']) : ANONYMOUS; 
 if($user_id!= ANONYMOUS) 
 { 
# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
return $userdata; 
# 
#-----[ BEFORE, ADD ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
 } 
 else 
 { 
  // Need to create some userdata 
  $userdata['session_id'] = ''; 
  $userdata['session_ip'] = ''; 
  $userdata['session_user_id'] = $user_id; 
  $userdata['session_logged_in'] = 0; 
  $userdata['session_page'] = ''; 
  $userdata['session_start'] = ''; 
  $userdata['session_time'] = ''; 
 } 
# 
#-----[ FIND AND DELETE ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
  // If we reach here then no (valid) session exists. So we'll create a new one, 
  // using the cookie user_id if available to pull basic user prefs. 
  // 
  $user_id = ( isset($sessiondata['userid']) )? intval($sessiondata['userid']) : ANONYMOUS; 
# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
  // 
  // Delete existing session 
  // 
# 
#-----[ BEFORE, ADD ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
 if(isset($session_id)) 
 { 
# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
  setcookie($cookiename . '_data', '', $current_time - 31536000, $cookiepath, $cookiedomain, $cookiesecure); 
  setcookie($cookiename . '_sid', '', $current_time - 31536000, $cookiepath, $cookiedomain, $cookiesecure); 
# 
#-----[ AFTER, ADD ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
 } 
# 
#-----[ SAVE/CLOSE ALL FILES ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
# EoM 

Good luck.

[webby2001]

Session id's are important but there is a way to create flat url's as well.
The forum whih cis on my site (see profile) is a phpbb 2.01 modified for search engine forum. Session ids are removed and the URL's are flat.

The flat url 'Mod' isn't official so if you want me to send you the files PM me.