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Topic: HA forum threads now search engine friendly.. (Read 3289 times) previous topic - next topic
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HA forum threads now search engine friendly..

I've modified the forum software a little to produce search engine friendly threads in most of the critical places. 

If you see URL's like:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/act/...t/ST/f/1/t/7305

now, instead of:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....=ST&f=1&t=7305&

...this is why.

I've also added a Sitemap link at the top navigation bar to aid bots in crawling through the forum.  All the threads in all of the forums here can be reached through this page.  It doesn't really have much use for humans though.

At any rate, this should hopefully allow for HA to show up more prominently in most of the major search engines when people are searching for audio related topics.

HA forum threads now search engine friendly..

Reply #1 –
I modified the software some more to make more of the critical links SE friendly.  While everything should still work OK, please point out any broken links or errors encountered when navigating the forums as I might have overlooked something in the changes I made.

Errors encountered before this post was made should be disregarded as I was still working on things

HA forum threads now search engine friendly..

Reply #2 –
Hey, that's great news! I wonder when the next Google Dance will be. Should I try to use the new link format when linking from my post to another post?

Also, that Sitemap link looks like a good starting-point for a text-only "skin". Any chance you'll sort/organize the links by descending date and category? I'm in no need of a text-only display, but I like the ability to see so many threads at once.

HA forum threads now search engine friendly..

Reply #3 –
Quote
Should I try to use the new link format when linking from my post to another post?


Hrm.. it's hard to say. It's possible that the SE friendly link system may change at some point in the future, so I'm not entirely sure it's future-proof. On the other hand, I suppose I could always keep the current system around for backwards compatibility. In the end, it probably doesn't matter a whole lot either way.

Quote
Also, that Sitemap link looks like a good starting-point for a text-only "skin". Any chance you'll sort/organize the links by descending date and category?


I doubt it. The sitemap section would need a whole lot of additional modifications to make it useful as a text only skin. However, it is likely that at some point in the future I'll look into this. I'm not going to do it until IBP 1.2 comes out though, since the skinning system is due for a major upgrade then. With 1.2, IBP will be 100% XHTML 1.1 compliant and will use a tableless design, relying almost entirely on XHTML , CSS for layout (there will probably be 2 or 3 tables per forum view, but that will be a huge decrease from ~30+ or so). With this sort of design in place, it'll be *very* easy to make something like a text only skin without too much of a hassle, not to mention it will significantly decrease the page size (and loading time) for all users, text-only or not.

Quote
I'm in no need of a text-only display, but I like the ability to see so many threads at once.


I could actually put more threads per page in the sitemap section, but the problem is that Google has certain guidelines for how they like to see links organized for them to give higher rankings. Since the Sitemap section basically only exists to aid in crawling and indexing the forum, it probably wouldn't make sense for me to change this behavior. If there is enough demand though for some sort of system to view massive amounts of threads at once, I could possibly look into a seperate page designed specifically for this purpose.