vBulletin Easy Archive

Recommended vBulletin Hack

vBulletin Easy Archive (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=65703)

This hack will help get all your threads listed in google and other search engines and get your threads easily spidered! It works by creating an archive and turning all your posts into .html format.

The purpose of this hack are to get your keywords from your forums listed in google and get people visiting them! Since these are all pure text and don't use tables or excess font tags, they are very friendly on bandwidth! This will display all your files in a nice text format that google will absolutely love!

I use this on all my forums. It was written by Xenon and he did some nice work here.

I have hacked this hack to improve it just a little more.

When you install this, you can name the directory anything you like. Use one of your main keywords as the name for this directory.

In archive_functions.php look for:

<title>' . $pagetitle . '</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />

Afterwords put:


<meta name="description" content="YOUR DESCRIPTION HERE - DIFFERENT THEN WHATS ON YOUR FORUM" />
<meta name="keywords" content="YOUR KEYWORDS HERE" />


Also - place a series of links in the header.php file, each one linking to one of your forums.

If you want to decorate your archive a little, put your forum banner in the header as well. I also place Google Adsense ads in my archive and make a nice little amount every month from these ads. The header.php and footer.php are there for you to customize your archive.

Warning, dont go overboard. This is suppose to be the archive. Dont start tossing a bunch of images in or using alot of css. This archive is there mainly so google can easily spider your site, and as such should be plain so search engines done have to trip over all that stuff. Keep it relatively simple.

News Feeds
I am currently testing placing a newsfeed into the footer of the archive. The reason being that Google likes content that changes frequently, and a newsfeed does just that.

I've got this hack running, but only for a short time. Is there any evidence that it works? I mean, have those who have used it seen an improvement in their placement?

I've got this hack running, but only for a short time. Is there any evidence that it works? I mean, have those who have used it seen an improvement in their placement?

Yes we do see a difference. My evidence is that before I switched, google ignored the archive. After the switch google hangs out.

The new vBulletin 3.5 may have a new archive, so that could all change.

How is this archive different than the one VB3 makes?

The part about links in the header.php has me a little confused.

Look here: http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/vbulletinforumhistory/

Well, it's been a little over a month, and I'm already seeing evidence, and a huge boost in guests and sign ups. Working in conjunction with other promotion tools, (like the welcome PM and other stuff) it's bringing in the peeps.

Does this work with VB 3.5.0? I just upgraded and I'm not getting a permission error.

Does this work with VB 3.5.0? I just upgraded and I'm not getting a permission error.


Yes it is, it's in beta. There are a few necessary edits to the code around post 33 of the thread, but ya may want to read the whole thread.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=83439&highlight=archive

I wish this were available for IPB. :(

Wayne Luke brought up a point early in the thread for the 3.5 version regarding possible penalties for duplicate content. I noticed that after his comment, no attempts seem to have been made to move this feature out of beta.

I was thinking of using this, but dont want to cause future problems with it. Any thoughts on this?

i installed it, but for some reason the end of my forum links are all like forums/5.1.html forums/6-2.html and don't point to the actual forums
i have dc mod rewrite installed, and tried with it un-installed,, still some type of link..
I looked thu the thread at vb.org and posted on it as well, but if anyone knows why my links shows pls let me know..
thank you
-Loco.

Where can i find archive_functions.php

I'd say that this is obsolete now. I doubt it works on 3.6.8 code. I had to do a huge rewrite to use it. And I still use it. But I can't publish it.

A quick look and you can see the difference. http://www.riderinfo.com/forums/archive/

I use 3.6.4

Where can i find archive_functions.php
:yes::yes: where can we find it
I use 3.6.9

I dont think you can. this thread is 3 years old and I dont think the hack has been continued.