vBSEO still under development?

Hi there, out of curiosity, is vBSEO still under development or is like with so many vBulletin addons and plugins these days...? I mean, the last version release is more than half a year ago, no update since then and no word on updates or a new version. Licenses are outdating and you don't get anything new within half the time of the one year's cycle. Communication at vB is bad, but vBSEO always was exemplary on both communication and support. Please let me know if I missed something and I shut up immediately . Any information on the future of vBSEO is more than welcome. It's still the best vB plugin available and I would love to keep it like this.

Hello Christian ,

vBSEO is still under development and improved according to customer needs. We are working on a new vBSEO version that includes many bug fixes and new features

As Mert states, yes, vBSEO is still an active product and we have no plans of stopping. A new version (likely 3.6.1 or 3.7, depending on features) is in the works and will likely be released within the next.... "soon"

Let me start by saying that vbSEO is a very good product that I would recommend to others, that the support here is extremely good (My hats off to the staff) and vbSEO is a company that I gladly buy from.

But there is some constructive criticism that I would like to share. I hope that you will see it as useful feedback and that it affects the direction of the product in a positive way.

I was a little disappointed to see how little vbSEO has developed in the last 4 years. While some nice features were added during these years, it still turned out to be a pretty big functionality downgrade to switch from NuSEO (2007) to the latest version of vbSEO 3.6 (2011). AFAIK vbSEO still does not optimize popular vb addons and I also miss various other functions.

Unfortunately the lack of a function to keep default vbulletin url structure has prevented me from using vbSEO on my site.
I had expected vbSEO to be lightyears ahead by now.


Some aspects of modern SEO:

Google caffeine & site speed have been around for a very long time and are emphasized by Google, but AFAIK vbSEO has not added functionality to optimize vbulletins speed.

While facebook and twitter have been important for some years and any site who want to gain traffic from these need to manage their account and update these with new content, there are no functions that allow forum staff/moderators to select content to add to the sites facebook page or twitter account. (please correct me if I have missed this)
A simple facebook app that posts forum activity to a users wall would do wonders to increase traffic from facebook.

For many years Google webmaster tools has been reporting pages with dead links, crawl errors, etc, and Analytics has been reporting top exit pages. These are important matters that forum moderators can correct if they would receive alerts about this. But AFAIK vbSEO does not provide such features.

These are just a few obvious examples of modern day needs that I miss in vbSEO.


Its very neat that vbSEO uses UserVoice to collect suggestions and to allow us to vote for most wanted functions, but it seems not many of the suggestions are being used or implemented.

Im not posting here to air negativity, but to give honest feedback that I hope will be considered with future development. In the last years I have read quite a lot of threads on vbulletin related sites that scrutinize the need for vbSEO. While I disagree with those who do not see the benefits of vbSEO, its clear that there are many who fail to see the benefit of your product. This always was very different in the past when people gave much more credit to the product. I think that if vbSEO would cater to the needs outlined above and would implement more suggested functionality, that this would positively affect such opinions and therefore increase sales.

Hello,

all feed back is always welcomed. However, It sounds like you are not familiar with a modern version of our product at all as most of these items are already a part of the software.

Originally Posted by alfa1

I was a little disappointed to see how little vbSEO has developed in the last 4 years. While some nice features were added during these years, it still turned out to be a pretty big functionality downgrade to switch from NuSEO (2007) to the latest version of vbSEO 3.6 (2011). AFAIK vbSEO still does not optimize popular vb addons and I also miss various other functions.

I am not familiar with the nuseo product, so i can't comment on that.

The CRR engine allows you to SEO any vb-powered page. Most popular add-ons have a 'crr rules thread' already posted with sample rules. If one doesn't exist, simply ask and we'll supply you some crr's to use.

Unfortunately the lack of a function to keep default vbulletin url structure has prevented me from using vbSEO on my site.

While this does eliminate one of the main parts of our product, it is already possible to disable url rewrites globally or on a per-forum Id basis.

I had expected vbSEO to be lightyears ahead by now.

in what way?

Some aspects of modern SEO:

Google caffeine & site speed have been around for a very long time and are emphasized by Google, but AFAIK vbSEO has not added functionality to optimize vbulletins speed.

caffeine is dead. We're on to Panda now.

vBSEO has many features aimed at speed and load times.

vBSEO includes CDN integration, and even partnered up to offer a FREE account to users to take advantage of it.

vBSEO offers an html clean up function to clear white space and improve page size.

vBSEO offers cache settings for hooking into xcache, eaccelerator, memchace, etc.

While facebook and twitter have been important for some years and any site who want to gain traffic from these need to manage their account and update these with new content, there are no functions that allow forum staff/moderators to select content to add to the sites facebook page or twitter account. (please correct me if I have missed this)
A simple facebook app that posts forum activity to a users wall would do wonders to increase traffic from facebook.

We offer simple social book marking options for sharing. Facebook also has RSS reading apps that you could syndicate posts to a page if you wish from the RSS feed.
But I will tell you, a 'robot' page like this will only annoy people. They want to see real human updates.

Frankly, it's not an SEO item, but a marketing one. And we are not in the marketing niche.

For many years Google webmaster tools has been reporting pages with dead links, crawl errors, etc, and Analytics has been reporting top exit pages. These are important matters that forum moderators can correct if they would receive alerts about this. But AFAIK vbSEO does not provide such features.

We are not an analytics program. These already exist, so why re-invent it when there already is something that works correctly from the search engine it self?

We offer a simple hook to enter an analytics account, and provide a sitemap generator tool to submit to the webmasters area to monitor.

These are just a few obvious examples of modern day needs that I miss in vbSEO.

Again, I encourage you to take a fresh look at the program, as you don't seem to be completely familiar with it.

Its very neat that vbSEO uses UserVoice to collect suggestions and to allow us to vote for most wanted functions, but it seems not many of the suggestions are being used or implemented.

We do look at and review all suggestions. Some are not in scope of what our product is. Some are one-offs. Some are impossible to program with current restrictions or limitations of vb. A lot have made it into 3.5 and the sub versions since.

Im not posting here to air negativity, but to give honest feedback that I hope will be considered with future development. In the last years I have read quite a lot of threads on vbulletin related sites that scrutinize the need for vbSEO. While I disagree with those who do not see the benefits of vbSEO, its clear that there are many who fail to see the benefit of your product. This always was very different in the past when people gave much more credit to the product. I think that if vbSEO would cater to the needs outlined above and would implement more suggested functionality, that this would positively affect such opinions and therefore increase sales.

There are always haters to any product or thing. Most of the 'vocal' people don't even have first-hand experience with our software and never owned a license. Don't forget everyone is a celeb and a lawyer on the internet.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

all feed back is always welcomed. However, It sounds like you are not familiar with a modern version of our product at all as most of these items are already a part of the software.

I am familiar with the latest version and as I see it all my suggestions still stand. I will explain below, what I did not explain well enough in my previous post.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

I am not familiar with the nuseo product, so i can't comment on that.

Just like vbSEO does much more than just pretty urls and has many settings to control CRR, so does NuSEO. And NuSEO does the same for addon products.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

The CRR engine allows you to SEO any vb-powered page. Most popular add-ons have a 'crr rules thread' already posted with sample rules. If one doesn't exist, simply ask and we'll supply you some crr's to use.

Many addons do not use vb powered pages. As stated, there is much that vbSEO does beyond pretty urls.
So ignore pretty urls for a moment. What does vbSEO do for say Photopost, LDM, Photoplog, ireviews, vbadvanced CMPS, vba Links, downloadsII or other popular vb addons? How does it remove duplicate content issues, optimize its pages, add relevant tags and keywords or remove problematic links & functions, cache settings, add analytics code, guest optimalisations, social bookmarking?
I have the impression that vbSEO does not offer such features and have found that these are very useful.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

While this does eliminate one of the main parts of our product, it is already possible to disable url rewrites globally or on a per-forum Id basis.

Yes and no. Its not possible to keep forum/showthread.php?t=134903 structure, while resolving duplicate content issues. If I want to keep the default showthread structure, then I need to turn off all rewriting, and then vb has a many urls that lead to the same content.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

in what way?

I had expected that vbSEO would have closed the feature gap between NuSEO and vbSEO and surpassed it with a wide range of modern functions similar to the functions I described. While vbSEO certainly added features in the meanwhile and also greatly enhanced the control panel, its not the case.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

caffeine is dead. We're on to Panda now.

Wasn't caffeine just an update (which included sitespeed emphazis) and panda another update? In any case: the same point goes. Site speed is still a major factor.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

vBSEO includes CDN integration, and even partnered up to offer a FREE account to users to take advantage of it.

Yes, this is a great feature of vbSEO. Its one of the things that made me buy a license. You managed to write a good integration while MaxCDN was not able to. I have been in close contact trough many chats and emails with NetDNA(maxCDN) about getting that integration from them.
Unfortunately MaxCDN turned out to slow down my site, instead of speeding it up. At least for part of my visitors. So I decided to disable it. Nonetheless, this is a very cool modern feature of vbSEO aimed to increase site speed.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

vBSEO offers an html clean up function to clear white space and improve page size.

vBSEO offers cache settings for hooking into xcache, eaccelerator, memchace, etc.

Again great vbSEO features that increase site speed.

But you know that there are many other functions that speed up vb and are not available in vbSEO. IIRC I read a post from a kind vbSEO developer who mentioned that you were considering to add functionality similar to vboptimize/vbsupercharged, yslow, sprites, javascript optimisation, minify CSS, etc.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

We offer simple social book marking options for sharing. Facebook also has RSS reading apps that you could syndicate posts to a page if you wish from the RSS feed.
But I will tell you, a 'robot' page like this will only annoy people. They want to see real human updates.

Yes, this is why it would be very useful for selected usergroups to have permission to select specific posts and threads to be automatically posted to the sites page on FB /twitter. This would offer a 'human' page.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

Frankly, it's not an SEO item, but a marketing one. And we are not in the marketing niche.

Yes, but at the same time Facebook links to a site are said to affect google ranking. And you have already recognized the value of social networking to vbulletin sites, as you have added sharing tools.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

We are not an analytics program. These already exist, so why re-invent it when there already is something that works correctly from the search engine it self?

But thats exactly the problem. The wheel has not been invented yet: reports from Google analytics and webmaster tools do not affect vbulletin itself, nor does it notify staff about major problems that need to be resolved.
The admin needs to access the Google account, then find the issues in WMT and analytics, then delegate the problems to the moderators. For a large/busy site this is simply too much work. Barely feasible. Yet, broken links, crawl errors, main exit pages are important issues that greatly affect google ranking.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

We offer a simple hook to enter an analytics account

Consider to take it a step furter an pull data from it and use that data to optimize the site or to allow board admins to optimize the site.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

and provide a sitemap generator tool to submit to the webmasters area to monitor.

The sitemap generator has been great for many years. And some vb addons can be added to the sitemap, but others can not.
The CRR for addons have been around in the forums for a long time. Instead of requiring admins to still manually add these CRR to the htaccess files, why not build them into the product as modules? If someone activates such a module for vba then allow the admin to set how to handle the rewite rules, tags, meta tags, canonical and other settings and automatically include it in the sitemap. Thats the kind of thing I would have expected to have changed after these years.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

Again, I encourage you to take a fresh look at the program, as you don't seem to be completely familiar with it.

Is there anything in specific that you want to make me aware of? You have not told me about any feature that I was not aware of.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

We do look at and review all suggestions. Some are not in scope of what our product is. Some are one-offs. Some are impossible to program with current restrictions or limitations of vb. A lot have made it into 3.5 and the sub versions since.

Before posting this I reviewed the changelogs of the last years and the 14 implemented suggestions listed on uservoice. I see around 8 major features released since 3.5 (depending how you count)

3.6 (5 major functions)
The Likes Tree
Likes in Profile
Like support for thread , blog entry , articles
Share Functionality
Enable like tree on specific forums
CDN integration
RR support for CMS Articles
Google Analytics privacy support
Arabic URL conversion from non utf8 to utf8
Option to always display Like in postbit
Article first_post_x_word support for CMS
Like system widgets for vB4
Like system importers
Like system recalculation
vBSEO CP Romanian translation added

3.5.2 (minor features):
Tag thread titles
Correctly Loading Div within vBSEO Cp
Improvement to vBSEO Cp language system
Automatic code insert for Relevant Replacements
Re-opening of the vBSEO.com CRR generator
Twitter has been added as a default Social bookmark
A new notice have been added that will remind you to chmod 644 your config.xml file

3.5.1 (2 major features plus new CMS support):
Livestats integration into the vBSEO CP
Adsense Targeting support for CMS Articles and Blog Entries
CMS Category Pagination URL
CMS Section Pagination URL
CMS Author Pagination URL
CMS Section List URL
CMS Section List Pagination URL
Multi-page Article URL Support
Multi-page Article Comment URL Support

3.5 (Minor features):
Forum Package only improvements
Url rewrite rule empty custom setting notification
Canonical Url support for Blog Entries
CMS Section URLs now support custom rewrites


It shows that vbSEO is certainly still under development with around 2 releases per year and a fair number of minor functions.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

There are always haters to any product or thing. Most of the 'vocal' people don't even have first-hand experience with our software and never owned a license. Don't forget everyone is a celeb and a lawyer on the internet.

Yes, so right. Im sure you have seen the threads where people post their analytics before and after turning vbSEO off. I guess that such threads stem from the fact that google handles default urls much better than years ago. So one of the main parts of vbSEO is less important than it was before. At least to some degree. In my mind that calls for innovation and more releases with major features.

Thank you for the feedback. I don't have the time at the moment to get a full reply together but know that i have read it and will follow up on it shortly.

If I may throw in : I am happy about the positive reply and I am looking very much forward to new versions! Whenever the next... "soon" will be ;-). Thanks and keep up the good work!

Sorry to bother, I am just curious: can we expect an updated version still in 2011 or rather 2012? Can you give at least a rough period? Thanks a lot.

I believe 2012 will be better timing

This might illustrate the point about addon modules, I was trying to make above:

Originally Posted by dvsDave

All this talk about the URL structure begs the question, will this be compatible with vbseo ?

Originally Posted by pegasus

Yes, but VaultWiki will (as before) need to be configured to resolve before vBSEO, since vBSEO doesn't know how to read any third-party URLs, and it doesn't have an adequate plugin system for handling them.

https://www.vaultwiki.org/showthread.php?p=14008

We have an 'api' available.
vBSEO Functions for Extensibility - vBulletin SEO Forums

a few includes and a few wrapper functions to the out put of the mod, and you can use the CRR engine for all urls.

Hey, any news on a new version? I think it's been a year since the last release. vB changed so many things, fixed so many bugs and updated so many details over the last versions that I start to wonder if vBSEO is still 100% compatible. I don't expect you to tell a specific date (of course not ;-)), but will a new version be available rather in Q I or Q II or maybe only Q III 2012...?

Hello ,

New vBSEO version should be expected in 45-60 days but please note this is just an estimate date.

Hi Mert,

Thanks for the update. Will this release be a maintenance release or features?
Could you please include an option to keep standard url syntax, but rewrite url link structure?
i.e. keep /showthread.php?t=1 but rewrite /showthread.php?p=1093952#post1093952

That would allow me to start using vbSEO.