[How To] Completely Turn Off the vBulletin Archive

How To Completely Turn Off the vBulletin Archive

Step 1: Turning the archive off is relatively easy, first we start with vBulletin itself:

• Visit your vBulletin Admin Control Panel, and on the left hand side, go into vBulletin Options.
• In the dropdown, find Search Engine Friendly Archive.
• Set the first option (Forum Archive Enabled) to "No", and hit the "Save" button.

Step 2: Now we want to change a few vBSEO Settings, in order to stop the rewrite:

• Go into your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) from your web browser and find the setting group called vB's Archive Options.
• For the first drop down option, select Keep vB's Archive default settings.
• Then hit the "Save Settings" button to proceed (Remember to have your config_vbseo.php CHMOD to at least 666)

Step 3: Disable search engines from indexing archive:

• Inside of your robots.txt, you should add the following lines to the bottom. (If you had a custom location for your archive, then please add that just like the following)
  
  • Disallow: /sitemap/
  • Disallow: /archive/
  
  

Step 4: Disable archive from sitemap (If you have our vBSEO Sitemap Generator installed, proceed, if not, then you are finished)

• Visit your vBulletin Admin Control Panel, and on the left hand side, go into vBulletin Options.
• In the dropdown, find vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator.
• Find option Include Archive Pages and set it to No.

Step 5: Remove the sitemap links in footer

• Go into your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) from your web browser and find the setting group called vBSEO Footer Archive Links.
• In the dropdown, select the Do not add Links to Archive Pages option, then hit the save settings button

Thankyou, it is good to finally have an easy to ready guide for doing this. I will make the changes to my robots.txt now

Note: I added a step 4, to show you how to remove it from the sitemap

Thanks for this guide

Thank you. This is exactly what I was hoping someone would do. I put together the notes, but was not sure I had all the information. The one thing in my notes that I do not see mentioned is a VBSEO setting:

Under:
Footer Archive Links Options:

Choose:Do not add Links to Archive Pages
Select this option to keep the default settings.

This will remove the numbers at the bottom of the page that now just redirect back to your home page when your archive/sitemap is disabled.

Cheers,
Bruce

Bruce - thank-you for reminding us. This is a step we need to add!

Step 4: I cannot find vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator under my vBulletin Options. Am I missing something?

Also, why do we need block access to /sitemap ? I thought it's still good to have the sitemap installed?

Originally Posted by Jason Amison

Step 4: I cannot find vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator under my vBulletin Options. Am I missing something?

Also, why do we need block access to /sitemap ? I thought it's still good to have the sitemap installed?

Step 4 is only if you have out sitemap generator installed. And I block the sitemap directory because vbseo rewrites the archive to sitemap (in some instances).

And I do have it installed: http://www.techsupportteam.org/forum...p_index.xml.gz

@Bruce, thanks for the reminder, I added that step to origional post.

@Jason, it should be in there. Did you check near the bottom? If not do you see it on the left hand side of your screen under the vBSEO group?

Strange, unless I'm being blind, I still cannot see it under vBulletin Options or vBSEO panels.

Originally Posted by Jason_A

Strange, unless I'm being blind, I still cannot see it under vBulletin Options or vBSEO panels.

Try Crtl+F and search for "Include Archive Pages"

Thank you vBSEO staff for putting together this excellent and easy to follow guide for us!

Not a problem

Does this help with SEO?