MyBB Community Forums

@Frostschutz
Thanx for the quick reply and for the time you spent making this great mod!

Hi there,

have taken the plunge and updated both the forum and Google SEO.

A couple of quick questions:

1) I have turned all the options within "Google SEO" on, as it seemed pointless to have everything off. However I have left everything else as it is by default because I have no understanding of how it works as yet. Hope it is OK.

2) Actually there is one setting that I have changed: In Google SEO Meta there is a box that asks if I want one or more forum NOT to be indexed. In my case I have fourm No. 4 in its entirety that is not to be indexed and forum 3.3 (i.e. subforum 3 within forum 3; not sure if there is a correct syntax for this). How do I go about it? For now I have entered "3,4" (no spaces in the string).

3) Clicked on the "sitemap" button but got this:

Quote:404 Not found

Not Found

The requested URL /forum/sitemap.xml was not found on this server.

Not sure if it is normal or what...

4) If you have a second, can you please check my forum to see that everything is where it is supposed to be? I am not quite sure where you looked last time we spoke (a couple of days ago)

TIA

(2012-02-04, 12:27 AM)Arka Wrote: [ -> ]forum 3.3 (i.e. subforum 3 within forum 3; not sure if there is a correct syntax for this).

That's not how it works; you have to put the forum IDs in there. You can see the forum IDs in the admin cp forum tab - if you mouse over the URL to each forum there it will have a parameter fid=123 in the URL, and the number is what you put into the setting.

(2012-02-04, 12:27 AM)Arka Wrote: [ -> ]3) Clicked on the "sitemap" button but got this:

Quote:404 Not found

Not Found

The requested URL /forum/sitemap.xml was not found on this server.

Not sure if it is normal or what...

Then your .htaccess doesn't have the sitemap rewrite rule or your rewrites aren't working for some reason.

Quote:I am not quite sure where you looked last time we spoke (a couple of days ago)

I assumed you meant the forum URL in your signature, which currently has a stray } at the top and no seo urls, so maybe you were talking about something else after all

Hi there,

still up?

(2012-02-04, 12:41 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]That's not how it works; you have to put the forum IDs in there. You can see the forum IDs in the admin cp forum tab - if you mouse over the URL to each forum there it will have a parameter fid=123 in the URL, and the number is what you put into the setting.

Done. Thanks for that. Just to make sure... I have entered one number for a forum (containing three sub forums) and a number for a sub forum, so 2 in total; I am expecting the forum (with three subforums) and the subforum to be invisible to Google.
I have left no comma between the numbers.

(2012-02-04, 12:41 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]

(2012-02-04, 12:27 AM)Arka Wrote: [ -> ]3) Clicked on the "sitemap" button but got this:

Quote:404 Not found

Not Found

The requested URL /forum/sitemap.xml was not found on this server.

Not sure if it is normal or what...

Then your .htaccess doesn't have the sitemap rewrite rule or your rewrites aren't working for some reason.

Never been anywhere near that...
Any clues...?

(2012-02-04, 12:41 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:I am not quite sure where you looked last time we spoke (a couple of days ago)

I assumed you meant the forum URL in your signature, which currently has a stray } at the top and no seo urls, so maybe you were talking about something else after all

Well, no. That bloody stray "}" that I cannot get rid of has been generated by the "Meta Tag" plugin I talk about in this thread:
http://community.mybb.com/thread-112719.html
I have done as they said, but no joy. I wonder if that could be my problem...

Thanks again

(2012-02-04, 01:03 AM)Arka Wrote: [ -> ]Just to make sure...

Just look at the page source of a thread and see if it has the meta robots noindex tag in it or not. If not, the setting is not configured properly. For subforums, you have to add each subforums id as well, not just the parent forum.

(2012-02-04, 01:03 AM)Arka Wrote: [ -> ]I have left no comma between the numbers.

I haven't checked but they're probably supposed to be comma separated. It should say in the settings description.

(2012-02-04, 01:20 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]

(2012-02-04, 01:03 AM)Arka Wrote: [ -> ]Just to make sure...

Just look at the page source of a thread and see if it has the meta robots noindex tag in it or not. If not, the setting is not configured properly. For subforums, you have to add each subforums id as well, not just the parent forum.

(2012-02-04, 01:03 AM)Arka Wrote: [ -> ]I have left no comma between the numbers.

I haven't checked but they're probably supposed to be comma separated. It should say in the settings description.

Thanks for that. Yes, I have done as you say and it now works
BTW, I meant a "space" not a "comma" (it was late at night )
Anyway I entered the list without spaces between the numbers and it seems to work fine.

Regarding the missing sitemap I am not sure what I am supposed to check/do...
Stray "}" finally removed, but has made no difference.

Hello, I want to thank you for such a great plugin. I'm not having any problems with it but I'm hoping you can help me figure something out. I'm using the the Admin CP Honeypot plugin located here http://mods.mybb.com/view/admin-cp-honeypot

The author of the Admin CP Honeypot plugin states in the description that users get a 404 not found page if they try to view the /inc/plugins/admincphoneypot.php file however what the users see is html content and the file name is visible in the address bar so it lets the potential attacker know the file is there. The idea behind it is for a potential attacker to not be aware it is there and for them to think they are actually working with the actual admin directory.

I would like to be able to have some congruency with the appearance of the error messages. What I am trying to figure out is whether or not I can get the same 404 not found error message when someone tries to view the /inc/plugins/admincphoneypot.php file that is displayed as a result of your plugin.

I also have some custom error messages for 400, 401, 403 & 500 setup in the .htaccess file however I like what you did with the 404 error much better and would like to be able to display those errors in the same way you did for the 404 on the forum.

Any help you can give me in working on this would be greatly appreciated.

You should be able to hide a file with .htaccess (so it raises a real 404 instead).

e.g. RewriteRule somefile.php [L,R=404]

As for the other error codes you can just do whatever you like with the ErrorDocument directive

One other question... browsing this thread I have read that it is advisable to add manually keywords as meta tags to the site as described, for example, here:
http://community.mybb.com/thread-112721.html
or is it redundant/inadvisable?

I am asking this because there are some keywords that are very relevant to my site, but I am not sure how to emphasize them so that my site is visible when searching for them.
Regarding the sitemap thing, my .htaccess file is dated Jan 2010, just in case it should be updated or something.

Sorry if I appear dense, but I am trying to understand a bit how SEO work

(2012-02-04, 11:44 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]You should be able to hide a file with .htaccess (so it raises a real 404 instead).

e.g. RewriteRule somefile.php [L,R=404]

As for the other error codes you can just do whatever you like with the ErrorDocument directive

Great! Thank you for the help. It worked like a charm! I'm not too familiar with the coding so didn't know I could do that.