SEO and Forum Creation

I am designing a new finance related website and plan on putting a forum in a subdomain. Is there any SEO benefits to using vBulletin or PHPBB? Also, wondering if I should host a Forum and a Blog? Is there anu benefit to doing both?

 

You should use mod_rewrite or something similar.

 

Use Vbulletin with VBseo as the ultimate solution. However, the costs can be quite high ($160+$150).
You might want to start with phpbb and see if you forum takes off before converting to VBulletin.

 

No, you shouldn't. It's unnecessary and may have some pitfalls. See threads about this in the phpBB and vBulletin forum here at DP.

Some of what vBseo does is mod_rewrite and you don't need that. It's the same thing with the Able2Know SEO MOD for phpBB. See threads on this topic in phpBB and vBulletin.

hmilesjr, the biggest difference is probably that vBulletin is more SEO friendly out of the box and with phpBB you'll need to wade in and modify the basic installation yourself (or pay someone to do it for you). It's really not a question of how big your forum is or anything.

 

Well, I am programming illiterate, so I will discuss it with my programmer. What about having a forum and a blog. Is it recommended?

 

Yes, there's no harm at all.

 

Why not? I have done that on three sites so far and working on a fourth. They can complement one another if you do it right.

 

Any site examples you care to share with me?

 

Look in his sig, http://www.psychlinks.ca/ is one of them

 

Sure - the main sites in my signature:

http://www.psychlinks.ca
http://forum.psychlinks.ca
http://blog.psychlinks.ca
http://directory.psychlinks.ca

One site - three arms coming off the main site with different functions. It all makes a little network really.

 

So the Recent Articles and Topics section of http://forum.psychlinks.ca just an RSS feed of your forum postings at http://www.psychlinks.ca/phpbb/index.php . Am I following this correctly?

 

I was a huge fan of the modrewrite VB stuff at first, but I'm not too sure how important it is anymore....

The engines seem to be getting so good at parsing pages with parameters these days....

I even see google trying to give different PR levels to different parameters lately so the fact that almost every site is now database driven or atleast the amount of sites using a database is quickly growing, I'm not sure how much better the mod rewrite is....?

 

Do you see this thrend occuring for basic website content (not forums, ie articles, blogs, etc.) or does mod rewrite still serve a purpose here?

 

Yes. It uses a MOD called topics_anywhere I think.

 

thank you to everyone for your advice and insight. I have a much better grasp on what I would like to do now.

 

WRONG

How many times do I have to explain this? The mod-rewrite does not help vbulletin whatsoever. I discussed this HERE and in about 20 other places.

I challenge anyone to PROVE the mod rewrite does anything helpful...

 

joeychgo,

I understand about not using the mod rewrite for vBulletin and from reviewing your posts I see what you mean. Concerning your sites (not the forums) are you using a customized CMS or an out of the box CMS that names your subfolders and files (If you don't mind sharing)?

I looked at Mambo and I just didn't like the character strings after the index.php. I felt it was too hard for the average user to follow and remember without the mod rewrite. Granted I don't know much if any about programming, and I maybe more confused than anything else. I am still trying to learn about CMS, PHP, etc. since I have only worked with basic html coding.

Hubert

 

I agree what joey and minstrel are saying.

And to add a few points of my own.

1. rewrite will add so much load on a big board...

2. Google sitemaps have made getting funky urls indexed a thing of the passed (for me anyway)

 

@hmilesjr:

Forums are great for building "community" which generates an abundance of content for the search engines. Just think of the wealth of content that is created here at DigitalPoint on a daily basis by its members.

You are definitely on the right track in considering SEO solutions for all aspects of your website, forums or otherwise.

 

Why would the average user NEED to remember those character strings? All they need to know is how to get to your site. After that, the navigation and search functions should get them to a specific page.

Nobody is suggesting otherwise. All we are saying is that mod_rewrite is not a necessary part of SEO and that mod_rewrite has some drawbacks which should make anyone think twice (or three or four times) before implementing it.