SEO

As a step to greater improve my SEO (not to mention save bandwidth, ease of template modifications, and all the other good stuff) I am in the process of removing all the un-necessary tables in the vB source code.

What a disaster this code really is. I'm one of those "die hard css guys" so yeah, I'm arrogant about it. lol

So far, I removed about 17 useless tables in various templates, and have cut 6kb from my test thread with 10 posts on it.
I've cleaned up the stylesheet, removed almost ALL inline style attributes (can't find a couple yet ), removed redundant styles, and actually used the CASCADING part of Cascading Style Sheets.

I REALLY wish i could edit the template by hand and not use those stupid forms. ugh. drives me nuts. I tried, and my server 550'ed my save cuz VB owns it. lol

And, i still have a BUNCH to get to.

6kb X 20,000 page views = 180,000 kb savings a day = 175MB x30 = 5.2GB of bandwidth a month savings.

If I can bump that to 12kb removed (which MORE than likely will happen) i'll be saving over 10GB of bandwidth a month.

Enjoy your tables :P

I too am undergoing a complete overhaul of my code, removing redudant plugin database modifications, refining code, compressing templates and making more efficient use of the cache system. As well as condensing down on the number of external files used on each page.

If you are interested in reducing page sizes further then i would recommended installing the following code modifications too;

• Template Cache System - vBulletin.org Forum
• Plugin Accelerator - vBulletin.org Forum
• Compress Forum Templates - vBulletin.org Forum

Wow - you guys are doing a lot of work - but the result should be some very efficient forums.

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Joe Ward / Crawlability Inc.
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Good links, Michael. I'll definitely look into this more. I'm coming form an IPB world where just about everything that doesn't need to be real-time is cahced from the oem install.
VB may be easier to use, and definitely has more plugins available, but I STILL think IPB is superior software...

oh well, this site i'm building now is my test for vB. I already have a 20k member forum on ipb. so i figured i'd try something else and learn more stuff.

Joe, yes, it's a lot of work... a lot of work that should have been done from the factory. But, I digress...

Maybe someday others will catch on that
can most certainly be replaced with

The only tables I plan to leave intact are the ones that contain tabular data.

my headers and footers are all done.
the postbits are more difficult, but once I get the floats correct (and working properly in that POS known as IE), I think i will be able to go completely table-less.

To true, and once the development of a table-less vBulletin skin design comes out, which i believe is in development here, this could result in a significant improvement in the organisation of vBulletin code and their accompanying modifications too.

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Wow, that thread has been going on since july 2005! I made more progress in my sleepless night then an entire site has in 9 months!

ss1, with styles.

ss2, css disabled.

perfectly usable

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I must admit i have been unimpressed at how, even after talk of a reward to the designer of the style no one has presented anything worthwhile. I noticed you are currently revamping the navbar template in your second screenshot, i am doing this too but am having some issues trying to get the dHTML drop down menus to function whilst encapsulating the links (e.g., User CP - Member List - Search - Quick Links), with <li> tags. Have you found a workaround for this bug?

i didin't realize it was a bug :P

I took out the JS because IMO it's useless. I plan to replace it with css dropdowns.

Well i wouldnt go as far to say a bug, more a limitation of the javascript code. As you suggested i implemented a simple CSS dropdown menu instead, although it would have been nice to have a sense of consistancy by using the same drop down menu style, (e.g., all dHTML) throughout and not have to comprimise.

I am not sure if this is of interest to you but, i found this webpage which discussess using list tags to present tabular data.

no need to comprimise! remove ALL the js menus :P

As for that link, while "neat", that is tabular data, and SHOULD be in a table.

any chance this style will be shared ? I'm interested in something like this.

doubtful that it will be shared, as it is pretty much custom at this point. I took out a LOT of useless markup, all the $spacer tags, and it's been really customized at this point.

Maybe in the future if i get time, i will take an oem install and provide clean markup for it and release it as a skin.

cool. if I knew what I was doing. I'd try cleaning the style up that I'm using.

Very interesting development. You might want to take a look at this thread for more ideas on lightening the layout.

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Juan Muriente / Crawlability Inc.
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I have this working,
li menu system with the dhtml drop down.

the yellow arrow is a background image of my li tag on a:hover state.

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