Xenforo & vBSEO's Relevant Replacements

[TheBigK]

I vaguely remember how vBSEO had brought a traffic boost to our website. One of the fantastic things in vBSEO that I loved was 'Relevant Replacements' . The feature would put the most important part of the discussion in the code and search engines loved it.

I've no doubts about XF's SEO capabilities out of the box. I'd like to hear your opinions and thoughts about having something like vBSEO RRs in XF; if it's not already done.

 

[Floren]

Can you please explain what are relevant replacements? An example will help a lot.

 

[Carlos]

Can you please explain what are relevant replacements? An example will help a lot.

It's a line of code that allows you to put exactly the kind of code that you want to output publically. For example. If you wanted to change the topic title from H1 to H4, then you can do it with RR's. And what's more, is that you can put the first 5, 10 words of your post underneath the second line for SEO reasons, you can.

 

[Floren]

I see, thank you for the nice explanation. Are relevant replacements used "only" for template replacements or there is a wider usage for them? I'm asking this because from a developer perspective, vBSEO probably used regex replacements which are a killer for server performance. If replacements are used into templates, the proper way is to create a XenForo IF where you define your conditions, like display a certain header for a forum, etc.

 

[Carlos]

I see, thank you for the nice explanation. Are relevant replacements used "only" for template replacements or there is a wider usage for them?

No template edits required; the ACP shows 3 or 4 input boxes, and these input boxes are used to put the topic title/5 or 10 words of your post....

So, this code:

<H1> [RR Code here] </H1>

Will translate into this:

RR CODE

In the topic title. This maintains flexibility for users who do not want topic titles to show up like a huge fat line, without being punished by google.

 

[Floren]

Read my post again, please. What you described above should NEVER be done with a regex function, which relevant replacements do actually. From my understanding, RR were designed to avoid template edits and other parts of physical text. That might sound like a fancy option for you but it is probably the worst thing you can do to your server performance. Thousands of users have this replacement done dynamically, instead of reading precompiled code. Do you understand where is the issue now?

 

[Carlos]

Read my post again, please. What you described above should NEVER be done with a regex function, which relevant replacements do actually. From my understanding, RR were designed to avoid template edits and other parts of physical text. That might sound like a fancy option for you but it is probably the worst thing you can do to your server performance. Thousands of users have this replacement done dynamically, instead of reading precompiled code. Do you understand where is the issue now?

Answered your own question. I'm not too familiar with regex, so apologies. I'm not a coder like you are.

 

[Floren]

Not a problem, you were very helpful to make me understand how the RR work. I would advise against this RR technique. It might be a little painful to actually edit templates, personally I use conditionals to load a different template based on the action I want to perform. For example, instead of loading some header templates for everyone, I can create 2 new templates and load each based on user status (guest or valid user). That will not modify the original template you are replacing, so you will not have upgrade issues.

 

[JulianD]

Not a problem, you were very helpful to make me understand how the RR work. I would advise against this RR technique. It might be a little painful to actually edit templates, personally I use conditionals to load a different template based on the action I want to perform. For example, instead of loading some header templates for everyone, I can create 2 new templates and load each based on user status (guest or valid user). That will not modify the original template you are replacing, so you will not have upgrade issues.

The sad part is that that's how the entire vBSEO system works. They use regex to replace all the links. Imagine the forum home with a list of online users. For a big site, they can have about 2000 registered users. If you decide to replace member's url, that's a lot to replace.... :/

 

[TheBigK]

The sad part is that that's how the entire vBSEO system works. They use regex to replace all the links. Imagine the forum home with a list of online users. For a big site, they can have about 2000 registered users. If you decide to replace member's url, that's a lot to replace.... :/

Yep, we used to have lot of troubles during the traffic spikes with vb4+vBSEO. Having vBSEO was like riding a tiger for us; once you're on, you can't get off. I wonder whether vBSEO folks will consider developing add-on for XF once XF wins the court case.

 

[Floren]

I wonder whether vBSEO folks will consider developing add-on for XF once XF wins the court case.

Personally, I find the current SEO in XenForo to be great. Myself, I will not purchase any SEO products as you can do any fancy rewrites very easy with Nginx. Example:
http://www.axivo.com/go/googleauth