critique my forum

[thalada]

My forum i s about 35 days old & i have installed vbseo 2weeks back, can some one share your suggestions with me?

Cheers

Extreme Sports Forum > Board Sports | Motor Sports

[A.Chakery]

Hello,

I checked your website, and here is my suggestions :

• First try to Validate all of you style pages like forumhome/forumdisplay and showthread : [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://extremesporters.com/forum.php - W3C Markup Validator
• Try To replace vBSEO Relevant Replacements with built in vBulletin Heading tags : VB4 RR's? (Note: I noticed that you are not using H1 tags which are so important, so please try to use is as Mert said in that post)
• Try to use a CDN service (like MaxCDN.com) using vbseo CDN feature.
• Try to remove Calendar and FAQ only for guests
• Try to include only Showthread / forumdisplay / blog pages into vBSEO sitemap
• Try to disable vbulletin archive and sitemap plugin, [How To] Completely Turn Off the vBulletin Archive
• Try to submit your website in Directories like DMOZ.
• An important note : Please notice that google likes the faster websites so to achive that you should try to remove big image files like your background, its true that it make your website beautiful but to be honest its not a good thing for SEO at all, the decision is yours.
• For more Performance try to check your website here : WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test

Good Luck,
Ali.Ch.

[thalada]

Hello,

I checked your website, and here is my suggestions :

• First try to Validate all of you style pages like forumhome/forumdisplay and showthread : [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://extremesporters.com/forum.php - W3C Markup Validator
• Try To replace vBSEO Relevant Replacements with built in vBulletin Heading tags : VB4 RR's? (Note: I noticed that you are not using H1 tags which are so important, so please try to use is as Mert said in that post)
• Try to use a CDN service (like MaxCDN.com) using vbseo CDN feature.
• Try to remove Calendar and FAQ only for guests
• Try to include only Showthread / forumdisplay / blog pages into vBSEO sitemap
• Try to disable vbulletin archive and sitemap plugin, [How To] Completely Turn Off the vBulletin Archive
• Try to submit your website in Directories like DMOZ.
• An important note : Please notice that google likes the faster websites so to achive that you should try to remove big image files like your background, its true that it make your website beautiful but to be honest its not a good thing for SEO at all, the decision is yours.
• For more Performance try to check your website here : WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test

Good Luck,
Ali.Ch.

Already i have done all of them except cdn service, which i can;t afford at the moment. Also my website i listed in DMOZ

[A.Chakery]

Hello,

I reviewed your website again and I noticed that you have done some improvements ,thats great!

But there is still some modifications that you haven't done yet.

for example take a look at here : [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://extremesporters.com/f14/famous-girls-dirt-bikers-175/ - W3C Markup Validator

there is 127 errors there which should be corrected and also your background is still there, its more than 100kb which is so bad for page load and its so effective on SEO.

Please recheck the items that I suggested you in my previous post and try to perform them, they are general seo modifications that should be done.

Good Luck.
Ali.

[thalada]

Thanks, now only

Result: 4 Errors

I don't know how to fix them.. lol

I desperately wanted those backgrounds, any ideas to disable them only to the bots?

Also feel free to suggest me anything which i have missed.

Cheers

[A.Chakery]

Hello,

Now please check your errors using below URL :
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://extremesporters.com/f14/famous-girls-dirt-bikers-175/ - W3C Markup Validator

I enabled the source code of your page to make it easy for you to find the issues.

There is nothing you can do about the 2 first errors , casue one of them is related to Facebook like button and the second one is related to image resizer plugin that you have installed.

you can solve other errors.

About the background : have you set it using the css codes or you have hardcodded it in your style ?

you can use

<vb:if condition="$show['member']">code for members<vb:else />code for guests</vb:if>

maybe it helps.

Have you done below items :

• Try to remove Calendar and FAQ only for guests
• Try to include only Showthread / forumdisplay / blog pages into vBSEO sitemap

and another thing try to re-write /forum.php to /forum/ using custom re-write rules located t vbseo control panel.

[thalada]

Hello,

Now please check your errors using below URL :
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://extremesporters.com/f14/famou...rt-bikers-175/ - W3C Markup Validator

I enabled the source code of your page to make it easy for you to find the issues.

There is nothing you can do about the 2 first errors , casue one of them is related to Facebook like button and the second one is related to image resizer plugin that you have installed.

you can solve other errors.

About the background : have you set it using the css codes or you have hardcodded it in your style ?

you can use

<vb:if condition="$show['member']">code for members<vb:else />code for guests</vb:if>

maybe it helps.

Have you done below items :

• Try to remove Calendar and FAQ only for guests
• Try to include only Showthread / forumdisplay / blog pages into vBSEO sitemap

and another thing try to re-write /forum.php to /forum/ using custom re-write rules located t vbseo control panel.

K, i will look in to the 2 errors soon.

• Try to remove Calendar and FAQ only for guests
• Try to include only Showthread / forumdisplay / blog pages into vBSEO sitemap

Already done

Try to re-write /forum.php to /forum/ using custom re-write rules located t vbseo control panel.

Is there any link which guides on how to do it?

[A.Chakery]

Yes, Here is the related forum for Custom rewrite rules : vBSEO SEO Plugin - Custom Rewrite Rules at vBSEO.com

and here is the CRR that you need :

'^forum\.php$' => 'forum/'

Regards.
Ali.

[thalada]

Yes, Here is the related forum for Custom rewrite rules : vBSEO SEO Plugin - Custom Rewrite Rules at vBSEO.com

and here is the CRR that you need :

'^forum\.php$' => 'forum/'

Regards.
Ali.

That worked, cheers Is there any reason for rewriting the URL?

Also, for rotating my backgrounds, i am using a hard coded php script. Any way, i can so that by using plug in manager?

[A.Chakery]

Well we use this re-write rule for 2 reasons : 1.the visitors will be able to memorize it easier , 2.It looks more beautiful

About the php script : Personally I am not well experienced in this issue , Mert or Brian are able to answer this question.

Regards.

[thalada]

Well we use this re-write rule for 2 reasons : 1.the visitors will be able to memorize it easier , 2.It looks more beautiful

About the php script : Personally I am not well experienced in this issue , Mert or Brian are able to answer this question.

Regards.

Well, even my main site points to the forum, so better to re-write forum.php to my main site?

Also, this is vb related, will they help me? Since it has nothing to do with vbseo.

[A.Chakery]

yes you can do that,

to be honest vBSEO team are not like vBulletin team at all, their support is great and I learned so much things even not related to the vBSEO plugin here.

take your shot and also you are able to ask it at off topic section too

[thalada]

Done, i hope some one will help me

Plug in to Randomize your background after every refresh!

[Marvin Hlavac]

Hi Thalada,

I can see why you like the images you use for your background. They illustrate what your forum is about: Extreme Sports!

I also agree with Ali about the size of the background file, and its impact on the load time of your site, especially for a guest visiting for the very first time.

I wonder if, instead of the images being a part of the background, you could use a plain, one color background, with no images at all, and then incorporate those images somehow into your logo.png image instead.

I desperately wanted those backgrounds, any ideas to disable them only to the bots?

Removing the images from the view of search engines would not accomplish the desired effect. We strive to make pages load faster for our forum users, so they can comfortably move from one page to the next.

Removing the images from the view of search engines would not fool the search engines into thinking our pages suddenly load faster. Search engines don't load the entire page like a web browser would. They just look at the code, and they may visit the links (including links to images) at a later time.

[A.Chakery]

@ Marvin : Thanks for the great tip Marvin , I always appreciate the help that you gave me


@Thalada : I forgot to say , can you give me the plugin that you are using for the background ? Maybe I could help U .