Before I jump into vBulletin

vBullletin has a rep for being the best. I don't deny that. I have a few special needs that I need addressed. If vBulletin can do that, I'm in. Otherwise, I'll just stick with the junk I have now.

1) I've read the guides about reputation. It's close to what I want. In fact, it's great on it's own, but I need another feature. I'd like to have a points feature. The points system would come automatically from posting. The more posts, the more points a user would receive. I would want to award more points to certain portions of my message board. I'm not concerned about spamming, because I will simply delete their post (and the points associated with it). The idea is to allow members to earn points and then trade them in for tshirts and various other items. In other words, I want to reward my users with real stuff. When they trade in points for stuff, their points will decrease just as if they spent money. This is the fundamental difference between my points system and the reputation feature. Can this be done? If it's not a stock option, could you direct me to the correct forum, person, or company that can get this done. Without it, I have little need for vBulletin.

2) I'd like a "Recent Posts" box as well to toss in my main site template. The links inside the box need to be search engine friendly. You can see this here: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/

Once again, if it's not a stock option, please direct me to someone who can make it work for me.


3) My seo guy is telling me that modrewrite can be a powerful feature. The idea of a forum thread having a filename that is the same as the title sounds appealing. Is it realistic?


Thank you,
Brandon Drury

 

Hi Brandon,

Regarding your second question, that is an out of the box feature of vBulletin, although it displays recent topics rather than posts. vBulletin can also automatically generate rss feeds of recent topics.

 

Thanks for the vbSEO hookup.

Brandon

 

Can make some of the URLs look long and odd though.

 

For #1, you can do that with the ucash hack. However, when you delete a post, the points stay, you have to log in to the admin panel and edit it manually.

 

For #1, you can do that with the ucash hack. However, when you delete a post, the points stay, you have to log in to the admin panel and edit it manually.

rite

 

Alright, cool.

I'll check out the Ucash option.

Thanks
Brandon

 

Sorry Sarah - But I gotta disagree with the vbseo hack. Its basically a mod rewrite, and is completely unecessary. I discussed this HERE

 

On most issues, T2Dman is right on - I've learned a thing or two from him in the past. But on this one, I have to agree with Joey - mod_rewrite is overkill, unnecessary, and may do more harm than good.

 

In general I agree with T2Dman - but I dont agree with him regarding the necessity of the mod-rewrite nor the emphasis he places on pagerank.

 

@Design_Agent:

vBSEO supports stopword removal and a 'Limit URL Length' feature, configurable within the control panel.

 

I'd have to completely disagree, with the advent of the new vB SEO 2.2.1 version you are able to have a new feature entitle Replacement Phrases which allows for your pages to become much more context relevant, including the ability to create excepts of the first words of the topic starting thread to help boost keyword density even further.

vB SEO also has the built in ability to clean up your HTML code, rewrite Next-Previous Thread links with actual topic titles, add size dimensions to all your images for better onpage loading times. Yet all this occupies only one template edit, a couple of file uploads and a product upload, not bad if you ask me.

 

A lot of people tend to mistake vBSEO for one of the typical "mod_rewrite" solutions.

In fact, mod_rewrite is just *one* component used to implement vBSEO - which is really a complete, feature rich, SEO solution for vBulletin that really works (click here for my post with info on what our customers are achieving).

FYI We do having working prototypes for IIS.

vBSEO has evolved from the previous series of simplistic mod_rewrite solutions. However, it is absolutely true that static CRUs (Content Relevant URLs) are at the heart of this technology. So, yes, depending on your configuration settings, you will have URLs similar to the following example for your forum threads:

http://www.vbseo.com/f84/my-own-little-success-story-thanks-vbseo-1836/

Code (markup):

We really get two main types of questions. The technical people want to know "Is this just another mod_rewrite? What are its features?". Less technical people interested only in generating more traffic, gaining more members, and earning more revenue want to know "Does it work?"

Q. Is this just another mod_rewrite? What are its features?

No - check out a sneak peak of the vBSEO admin interface to see the many SEO features it includes:

vBSEO Admin Control Panel

Q. Does it work?

Yes - We have never had any of our 100s of users tell us otherwise. Here's some of the non-technical benefits:

Benefits of using vBSEO

 

Well, its important to note, these guys are trying to sell their product. I gain nothing, and am merely offering my opinion.

.

 

@joeychgo:

Did you provide your AdSense ID to participate in DigitalPoint's ad revenue sharing program?

Just kidding!

 

It isn't a question of how many features vbSEO offers, in my opinion. It's more that most of that isn't necessary and the rest is rather easily done by the webmaster at no cost. It seems to me that the price of vbSEO is pretty steep for adding unnecessary features.

 

The features arent unneccessary, i feel they are certainly beneficial in helping you improve your Search Engine placement and spidering frequencies by bots. And in most instances the features are merely there to improve ergonomic aspects of your forum environment, such as improving page loading time for users by applying image size attributes.

For example:

Yes copy and pasted, but still appropriate.

 

All easily done with minor tweaks at no cost to the webmaster, assuming minimum knowledge of html and php.

Not generally a problem for the majority of forums - therefore not a necessary enhancement.

"Some SEO experts"? If this is a problem for search engines, I can tell you that a lot of high ranking websites are in trouble and don't yet "know" it. Unnecessary.

Might be helpful, at least regarding the description tag. Not sure it's worth paying someone else to do it. Also note that the description tag only affects what is displayed in the SE listing (sometimes) - does not affect actual SE ranking.

A myth not requiring attention.

Unnecessary. I would argue that as many or more people probably search for acronyms like SEO - it's probably an advantage to leave it as is.

Easily done yourself.

I doubt that this is going have any discernible effect on the vast majority of forums.

Bottom line: This seems like an expensive solution for either (1) things you can do yourself for free with minimal knowledge of page building and SEO or (2) things that really aren't going to have any signicant impact on your forum rankings.

 

(1), all these things can be done seperately, but with minimal knowledge? I think you are underestimating the programming knowledge of the average user, vB SEO provides a coherant piece set whereby a plug and play format is truely adopted in its richest sense. Not a format whereby vb.org>search>download>install>apply templates>apply file edits>mess up>retrack>turn forums offline>lose important data in process>reinstall is applied for each of the features which vB SEO provides with just one template and a simply collation of file uploads.

Also can i just stress i have no relation to the vB SEO company, i do not work for vB SEO and i am basing my information off my experiences as a customer there, isnt it appropriate that those who purchase the product are a) willing to defend it, b) enjoy the extra time of not having to perform multiple installations, c) enjoying the PROVEN extra revenue and activity with vB SEO brings and finally d) are continually discussing what a good product it is. And yet those who havent experienced vB SEO are constantly talking down the product as though they know every aspect of its usability, ease of use and extensive feature set; which is clearly inaccurate.