Migrating site using vBSEO to Xenforo URLs?

[cmeinck]

From what I've been reading, vBSEO will not support XenForo -- at least initially. If this is true, how would a site migrate to XenForo without losing SERPs of current URL's. Would there be redirects? Not sure if/how this would work?

I do know that I would not want to have to wait for Google to completely reindex my forums.

 

[James]

I have not seen the XF ACP, but to give one example; I do not assume it has the ability of adding custom rewrites in the ACP like so:

'^sponsors\.php$' => 'sponsors/'
'^links\.php$' => 'links/'
'^showgroups\.php$' => 'forumleaders/'
'^search\.php$' => 'search/'

There is other functionality other than basic URL rewriting in their ACP, I can provide you with a login to take a look if you'd like.

IIRC, Kier posted a piece of code showing how the route class can be utilised to create custom URL structures. I'm not sure if it's in the ACP but it'd be possible with a plugin

 

[Carlos]

I'm curious to know what you think that vBSEO offers that XenForo does not, in the way of optimisation for search engines.

Um. Sir. With all due respect, here are the ...features that vBSEO does offer:

- Sitemaps (not sure if XenForo has one, but it needs to be added for better crawls).
And I'm not talking about "archive" [like vB] kind of sitemaps, I'm talking about the XML file that we use to put in google analytics.
- Pingbacks/Refbacks 'log'
- Although you have Facebook like feature, and the upcoming twitter button - They have social bookmarks.

There may be others I'm missing, but that's the few off my head.

Oh, and RR's for H1/H4 tags.

I'm not saying they have better URL structure than you do - Well, they do, but only because of the multiple URL link structure choices. Other than that, you have what they have, its just their product is more built-up.

I'm just trying to be respectful here.

 

[Kier]

I wasn't trying to rubbish vBSEO, I simply asked what features they offer over and above those provided by XenForo that people feel are beneficial to SEO.

 

[Carlos]

Understandable.

 

[Tigratrus]

Another thing is there's an option to have vbseo strip out the whitespaces and comments to produce somewhat more compact output, thus making it faster to download. 'Course, you need to remember to turn that off before trying to troubleshoot something, but you'd need to do that with debug anyway

 

[Kier]

Another thing is there's an option to have vbseo strip out the whitespaces and comments to produce somewhat more compact output, thus making it faster to download. 'Course, you need to remember to turn that off before trying to troubleshoot something, but you'd need to do that with debug anyway

Removing comments - fine. But removing whitespace? Seems pointless to me when the HTML is served gzipped, which effectively does that anyway.

 

[Tigratrus]

Assuming that gzip is working and supported on both ends, yes. But that's not always the case, and when it's not, having the whitespaces removed server side is still of use.

 

[Luke F]

Removing comments - fine. But removing whitespace? Seems pointless to me when the HTML is served gzipped, which effectively does that anyway.

No it doesn't. Completely removing the space between block level elements saves a fair bit on top of gzipping.

But it's not really worth it

 

[Shadab]

Oh, and RR's for H1/H4 tags.

...which you actually don't need in XF. I briefly described it in my previous post (quoted below) in this thread already. XF already utilizes H1, H2, H3 & H4 elements in the page structure on forumhome, thread listing and thread pages, nicely. Offering an option for something as obvious as heading tags is not needed.

RRs were used to place relevant content higher up in the html source code. This could have been helpful for vB if you were running a graphic heavy website or had messy html. But since xF is highly optimized out of the box, thankfully, we would no longer need to rely on such template modifications. The html code is semantic and the actual content is already placed before the forum header in the source code!

 

[Carlos]

I see. Well thank you for the education.

 

[James]

Um. Sir. With all due respect, here are the ...features that vBSEO does offer:

- Sitemaps (not sure if XenForo has one, but it needs to be added for better crawls).
And I'm not talking about "archive" [like vB] kind of sitemaps, I'm talking about the XML file that we use to put in google analytics.
- Pingbacks/Refbacks 'log'
- Although you have Facebook like feature, and the upcoming twitter button - They have social bookmarks.
I'm not saying they have better URL structure than you do - Well, they do, but only because of the multiple URL link structure choices. Other than that, you have what they have, its just their product is more built-up.

Sitemaps are a nice feature, I think it was suggested?
Ping/refbacks could be useful - though how often is it utilised?
Social bookmarking will be available either as a modification or as a standard feature, I am sure.

I, personally, love XenForo's URL structure. It is very hierarchical and easy to read. Could you recommend a better URL structure (without the loss of IDs)?

 

[Carlos]

No, I'm not debating that part.

I use the ping/refbacks a lot - I want to know who is linking to my site. That way, I could go to that territory and take that market.

 

[James]

No, I'm not debating that part.

I use the ping/refbacks a lot - I want to know who is linking to my site. That way, I could go to that territory and take that market.

Suggest it

 

[Jeffin]

Assuming xF would not for now have a smooth migration from vbseo urls to xF urls, would it be advisable to uninstall vbseo plugin right now so Google can start indexing the standard vB urls? Would that make any difference? I am prepared to sacrifice a bit for a better product.

 

[Enigma]

The problem is to redirect the old vbseo-urls to the new xenforo-url for "save" the positions in google serp...

If you use 301 redirects, your SERP positions should not be affected, apart from a possible temporary drop right after the change.

 

[Markos]

If you use 301 redirects, your SERP positions should not be affected, apart from a possible temporary drop right after the change.

Yes my question is to have an automated service/script to do that...

 

[dutchbb]

No it doesn't. Completely removing the space between block level elements saves a fair bit on top of gzipping.

But it's not really worth it

Still, Google and others do it, so I'm sure it's worth it if you think even a small difference is important.

I, personally, love XenForo's URL structure. It is very hierarchical and easy to read. Could you recommend a better URL structure (without the loss of IDs)?

I can. I think thread URL's should include the forum ID they're in. I have it that way, example:

http://forum.dutchbodybuilding.com/f8/piramide-reps-254397/

that would be better than:

http://forum.dutchbodybuilding.com/threads/piramide-reps-254397/

because it gives the user more information about its location + it's more logical, since threads are in a virtual directory 'forum x' not 'threads'.

Using just forum ID's instead of forum names (+ID) has the advantage of being able to rename forums at any time, without changing their URL (and lose PageRank temporary), and it's shorter.

 

[Carlos]

I like the named forum category in URL's because - lets say you're searching for a game for a SPECIFIC console... google recognizes what you put in, so whatever you're searching for has relevant information. I will try my best with an example:

Lets say you're searching for Modern Warfare 2 tricks SPECIFICALLY for Xbox 360.

A few results come up and shows:

Modern Warfare 2 quickscoping on xbox 360
Why? [website url]xbox360/what-is-quickscoping?thread-111.html

Modern Warfare 2 camping spots on xbox 360
Why? [website url]xbox360/why-do-people-camp?thread-124.html

A lot of this has to do with google's organization scheme.

If you put forum ids before the subject matter, google doesn't know how to populate your relevant data. It assumes that its only a subject matter.

 

[yoghurtfarmer]

...

...

I've mentioned including forum categories in the URL before. I use that kind of structure to my benefit with tools like Google Custom Search.

For example, if I only wanted GCS to index threads under a category called "Avoiding Hookworms", I could define

http://barefootparadise.com/avoiding-hookworms.8/*

However there are inherent drawbacks to this structure. The biggest is probably that when a thread is moved, the URL changes. Whether or not the drawbacks outweighs the benefits is debatable, but I think for a default option the current URL is best. It draws more focus to the topic and when threads are moved, the links remain the same. This is good for maintaining position on search engines.

Also, I think Mike might have mentioned something about the forum being coded in such a way that it can't easily be changed.

Would be a useful mod though.

 

[dutchbb]

A thread is usually moved shortly after it is created, so at that point it isn't indexed yet. Moving it and thereby changing the URL will thus not have an effect on it's PageRank and indexing. I think it's more important to have a logical URL regarding threads. But for the forums I do follow your argument, as I already explained.