how-to properly setup a mobile side of a forum?

[Caddyman]

hey all been a while since i posted here, had a question...

I have www.TalkDelaware.com, vbseo, vbulletin

I want to have people go to m.talkdelaware.com and be the mobile version of the site....with a mobile skin and all.

what is the proper, seo friendly, way to do this? if any?

[tavenger5]

I use a combination of different plugins from vbulletin.org on my site.

Mobile Phone / iPhone / PDA Detection and Style Assignment - vBulletin.org Forum

Extend and Customise "Mobile" Style Options - vBulletin.org Forum

Mobile, Cell, Phone, PDA, iPhone Style - vBulletin.org Forum

Limit Posts/Thread per Page for a Specific Style - vBulletin.org Forum

Then I pointed m.site.com to site.com/?styleid=# (where # is the id of the mobile style)

Regardless if the user goes to this URL, if the above mobile detection plugin does its job the user is redirected to the mobile site anyway.

[Caddyman]

thats the thing, i want people to be able to pick and i want to have a dedicated site m. for mobile users....

i have detection on now, and it works great, but i would like to give the user the choice.

i can get m. to work, but because of vbseo all links from there are back to www. which flips it back to www.

how can i make vbseo stop doing that, i know i can turn off "Include Domain Name in URLs?" but will that hurt my serps?

[Caddyman]

anyone know if turning off "Include Domain Name in URLs?" will affect my seo?

[gniuz]

i hve been trying to do that also.

from what i feel, what is going on here is that, if they can't help you, they tell you it's bad for seo.

[gniuz]

Btw, turning off Include Domain Name in URLs will only work partially, that is in your home page only. If you go further pages, you'll find out that the links are going back to www.

See these pages:

Frontpage News - Talk Delaware Online

Thief's Getaway Car Jumps Curb, Kills 3 Kids - Talk Delaware Online

[Caddyman]

when i turn it off it does work, i left it on in fear of hurting seo, but when off i tested and it was good to go.

[Caddyman]

is this really that tough of a question to answer? does no-one have a setup similar to this working? seriously?

[gniuz]

Hi,

I'm sure without vb seo that can be done.

Check

MSC Forum
MSC Forum
MSC Forum

Notice all 3 domains are pointing to the same forum.

But with VB seo, I'm not sure.

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Hi,

I'm sure without vb seo that can be done.

Check

MSC Forum
MSC Forum
MSC Forum

Notice all 3 domains are pointing to the same forum.

But with VB seo, I'm not sure.

That is a setting noone should use. vBulletin already has tons of duplicate contents and with that setting you'll have 3x duplicate content.

[Caddyman]

there has to be a way to do this in a seo friendly manner, i see a lot of sites (big sites) that do this....

crackberry.com for example...has www.crackberry... and has wasforums.crackberry....

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Crackberry is using the following setting : Their mobile site is using m.crackberry.com and this is just a subdomain that is normally linked to forums.crackberry.com?styleid=x . All links on the page are pointing to original thread urls with mobile style. There is nothing wrong on this setup.

[tavenger5]

Crackberry is using the following setting : Their mobile site is using m.crackberry.com and this is just a subdomain that is normally linked to forums.crackberry.com?styleid=x . All links on the page are pointing to original thread urls with mobile style. There is nothing wrong on this setup.

This is exactly the same thing I do in conjunction with the mods I posted above.

[Caddyman]

YUP, I think i got it working, thanks Mert, and Tavenger!

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Glad to hear