phpBB

Pentax

Hi All,

I started a forum website a couple of weeks ago and I finding getting Goggle to list it in their search results to be very difficult.

Someone recently told me that Google doesn’t like phpBB forums and tries to block it from their results, is that true? If not can someone advise me on what Im required to do to get the site some recognition.

Regards

John:)

oscarBravo

Moved from Open Source.

Pentax

Hi OscarBravo,

Why was it moved, phpBB is an open source software, where has my post been moved too.

Regards

Pentax

oscarBravo

It has been moved to Internet Marketing / SEO, which struck me as a better fit for your question - unless you think you can improve your search engine ranking by hacking on the source code of your web framework?

Pentax

Hi OscarBravo.

Okay that’s fine. Didn’t realise there was a section for Seo and Marketing.

Regards

Pentax

Digital Society

Some platforms tend to do better than other in SEO. PHPBB wouldnt be completely ignored by Google. I would imagine the reality is that anyone who is serious about their forums tend to go for the paid options. i.e Vbulletin or Xenforo and simply push them more.

Xenforo is apparently the best performing SEO wise so if you wanna make an investment it costs about 150 quid.

Also SEO is a marathon and not a sprint. Just be patient and keep posting unique relevant content. Dont just copy and paste form other forums or sites. If you do try rewrite it a bit. Better to write a couple of paragraphs on it yourself than copy and paste ten from somewhere else.

With forums eventually you hit whats called critical mass. Thats when it has enough members that you dont need to post yourself and the site basically runs itself. Attracting regular newcomers through Google and regular posters keep posting.

Setup a twitterfeed and feed your RSS feed to Facebook, Twitter and whatever else it lets you. usually can kickstart a forum into Google.

Pentax

Hi Digital Society,

Thanks for your advise. I will look into a paid fourm options and see what they are like. So it is possible to get reconition from Google for phpBB, I just need to do some more work. The site has been live for a couple of months and nothing yet although I haven't posted much information and have very few members.

I will look at Xenforo now.

Regards

Pentax

Stuxnet

slow down,

We used run a ps3 clan forum on phpbb, there is no need to go down the paid route, you must enable what forums you want index-able by google in the admin panel.....

Mrs OBumble

Pentax wrote: »

...I haven't posted much information and have very few members.

Fix this problem first, before you waste time/money changing platforms.

Media999

I couldnt even begin to understand why PHPBB would have robots blocked by default and not make it obvious if it did. Is that true?

I assume it is if your saying it is but whats the logic?

Stuxnet

Media999 wrote: »

I couldnt even begin to understand why PHPBB would have robots blocked by default and not make it obvious if it did. Is that true?

I assume it is if your saying it is but whats the logic?

Blocked is the wrong word, but some people that run forums, mightn't want certain forums indexable, we have our poll forums unindexable etc,
you wouldn't want your posts in a STD forum coming up on google search results now would you :-p

Media999

Yeah but all blocked by default?

Also make it so non-obvious that people cant understand it.

Block pages by htaccess if necessary but not just block the whole site bar the homepage.

Last time i installed a Wordpress blog it had a big warning saying Google cant index site which nagged until Google spiders where allowed.

Thats the smart logical way of doing it.

Pentax

Hi All,

As advised I have unblocked my site for search engines but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

I have also discovered that when people register with my site they don’t seem to be able to post a new topic/forum. Is this a permissions thing and if so can you give me some advice on how to rectify it.

blue4ever

Test first-

In the google search bar put in

site:myforum.ie

(substituting myforum.ie for your actual site name)

Whats on the search results:

C

cormee

Pentax wrote: »

Hi All,

As advised I have unblocked my site for search engines but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

I have also discovered that when people register with my site they don’t seem to be able to post a new topic/forum. Is this a permissions thing and if so can you give me some advice on how to rectify it.

Sounds like content is the cause of your first issue, the Googlebot would have very little time for a forum with no postings, regardless of the type.

Your second issue might be related to your settings, make sure you don't have new registrants subject to manual approval by admin, and check your addons, if none of them look suspicious, disable them one by one and see if that fixes the issue.

Pentax

Hi Cormee,

Thanks for the reply. When I type int into google search engine it dosplays the results with the followinging question "did you mean myfourm.net rather than .co.uk. When i select no it lists my site at the top, is this normal?

When I go home tonight I will look at the settings I have for new users and try and work something.

Cheers

cormee

Pentax wrote: »

Hi Cormee,

Thanks for the reply. When I type int into google search engine it dosplays the results with the followinging question "did you mean myfourm.net rather than .co.uk. When i select no it lists my site at the top, is this normal?

When I go home tonight I will look at the settings I have for new users and try and work something.

Cheers

That probably wasn't meant for me, was it? Anyway, yes that's normal behaviour, there is probably a myforum.net that ranks a lot higher than yours and Google is assuming you want to go there instead of myforum.co.uk