vBSEO 3.0.0 Gold is Here!

Hello Everyone,

For the last year, the most anticipated plugin in the vBulletin community has been vBSEO 3.0.0 GOLD. Just over 1 year ago on January 26th 2006, vBSEO 2.4.0 GOLD was officially released.

With that said, we are extremely pleased to inform you that vBSEO 3.0 GOLD has been approved for distribution to all customers, effective immediately!

vBSEO 3.0 Release Sale - 48 HOURS ONLY

1 Year - Over 7,000+ Hours of Research & Development
vBSEO 3.0 GOLD marks the completion of over 365 days of tremendous efforts from all involved including 7,000+ hours of development time by our team, and rigorous testing by our pre-release team who were relentless and absolutely refused to leave any "vBSEO 3.0 stone unturned".

Likewise, many of the new features or updates included in this release were based on recommendations from you --> our vBSEO customers and friends!


"vBSEO Rocks My Pants, I Love It"
Our vBSEO community thrives in large part to our thousands of vBSEO customers who support us here, helping us to secure vBSEO's role as the definitive SEO enhancement for vBulletin powered forums.

We appreciate all of your feedback whether it is in the form of a wacky testimonial such as "vbseo rocks my pants, I love it" or confessions of how vBSEO increased your AdSense earnings so much that you bought a new BMW...

...more vBSEO Testimonials.

vBSEO 3.0 GOLD - The Largest vBSEO Release Yet
vBSEO 3.0 GOLD is by far the largest release to date, containing dozens of new features (LinkBacks, Social Bookmarking integration, Custom 301 Redirects), over 80 updates to our existing features, and over 150 fixes for small issues reported within our user community.

While many of you have installed 3.0 release candidates 1 through 8 and are familiar with some of the new additions, this announcement will provide a complete overview of all new features, updates, and fixes.


vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator v.2.0
UPDATE REQUIRED: Please remember to update your vBSEO Sitemap to the latest version, v.2.0. It is required for compatibility with vBSEO 3.0.0 GOLD. Below are the updated vBulletin.org download locations for the vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator v.2.0 for each vBulletin version:

• vBulletin 3.0.x vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator v.2.0
• vBulletin 3.5.x vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator v.2.0
• vBulletin 3.6.x vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator v.2.0

Note: Although there is only ONE (1) vBSEO Google/Sitemap Generator product, we ask you to please download (and get support) in the thread corresponding to the vBulletin version you are running. This will allow us to better serve you.

Happy vBSEO-ing!

Buy vBSEO 3.O GOLD

Read on to find out more about what's included in vBSEO 3.0.0...

New Features in vBSEO 3.0 GOLD:

• NEW FEATURE: LinkBacks (Ping/Track/Refbacks) - "LinkBacks" is the generalized term we use to reference three methods of communication between websites.
  
  This new system allows your forum to interact and build links with the "blog-o-sphere" via Linkbacks (TrackBacks, PingBacks and vBSEO's own RefBacks).
  
  
  
  
  While concepts like PingBacks and Trackbacks where originally developed exclusively for blogs, they are now being integrated into other types of content management systems (CMS).
  
  By harnessing and expanding upon this technology, vBSEO gives you a powerful way to create inbound and outbound relevant linking between your forum and other sites, which not only has SEO advantages, but also enables a new stream of direct clickthrough traffic.
  
  For a more indepth technical description of LinkBacks, including PingBacks, TrackBacks, and RefBacks, please see our LinkBack overview.
  
  vBSEO includes a full section to manage your LinkBacks within the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php), where complete configuration of options for incoming and outgoing linkbacks, as well as permalinks, can be set.
  
  The LinkBack system also allows for advanced moderation via a full LinkBack moderation system located in the vBulletin Admin Control Panel.
  
  After you install vBSEO, see the "LinkBacks" category on the left side navigation of your vBulletin AdminCP.
  
  For complete details on how to configure and moderate your vBSEO LinkBack system, please see the vBSEO LinkBack User Guide.

• NEW FEATURE: Social Bookmarking - Many of you may be familiar with the concept of "social bookmarking" and websites like Digg.com, del.ici.ous, Technorati, or FURL.
  
  Wikipedia defines social bookmarking as:
  
  Originally Posted by Wikipedia

  Social bookmarking sites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links through the practice of folksonomy techniques on the Internet...
  Similar in some respects to the LinkBack system, vBSEO's social bookmarking features allow you to build inbound links to your forum on various social bookmarking sites. This provides you with an SEO advantage for relevant inbound links. It also generates clickthrough traffic from these sites while notifying them of new (or updated threads) via RSS feeds.
  
  You can enable or disable the social bookmarking feature within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php). When enabled, you have the option of displaying social bookmarking icons at the bottom of (1) each thread only, or (2) each thread, and each post within the thread.
  
  When your forum users click on these icons, they will be taken to the specific social bookmarking site, where they can follow the procedures specific to the site to create a link back to their chosen thread/post.
  
  Since there is a growing number of social bookmarking sites, vBSEO has a built in feature to allow you to specify custom sites to be added. Digg, Technorati, del.ici.ous, and FURL are the 4 default options, which can be individually enabled or disabled.
  
  To enter a custom social bookmarking site, you must enter text in the following format:
  
  Code:

  Bookmark URL,Icon URL,"Bookmark Thread" Text,"Bookmark Post" Text
  

  Example:
  
  Code:

  http://reddit.com/submit?url=%url%&title=%title%,images/vbseo/reddit.gif,Reddit!,Reddit!
  

  The example above would allow you to add the Reddit.com site to the social bookmarking options available on your forum.
  
  Configurations may be difficult for non-technical users. If you require assistance, please post a request for help with custom social bookmarking configuration on our forum or via a customer support ticket.
  
  NOTE: Social bookmarking icons will only appear on your publically accessible threads. They will not be displayed on any private threads since they would not be accessible on a clickthrough.
  
  To change the location of the social bookmarking icons, you can edit your vBulletin postbit template, and place the following code:
  
  Code:

  <!--VBSEO_BOOKMARKS-->
  

  
  
  Caution: Do not use vBSEO's social bookmarking features in a way that could be interpreted by the social bookmarking sites as SPAM. It could result in your forum being blacklisted from participation. As a general rule of thumb, you should allow your users to use the social bookmarking features independently. If you submit too many of your own threads to these sites, you may very well receive a penalty for spamming. Avoid this situation, since it will eliminate a traffic stream for you, as well as remove the SEO advantage of having relevant links back to your forum. If you determine that you were unfairly penalized by these sites, you will have to submit a request for re-inclusion that may be a timely process without any guarantee of success.

• NEW FEATURE: Footer Archive Links - With the new vBSEO Footer Archive Links feature, you can place links to your main forum archive sitemap pages at the footer of each of your forum pages.
  
  This process is useful in helping to direct Crawlers from your homepage to all of your forum threads.
  
  Over time, threads that are not updated with new posts get buried deeper and deeper within your forum display pages. The footer archive sitemap links help search spiders reach them more effectively. Since vBSEO optimizes on a thread-by-thread basis, allowing easier access to your thread pages can provide SEO advantages. Good quality content and vBSEO will harness search engine traffic for thousands of different search keywords and keyword phrases.
  This feature can be enabled and configured within the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php). You can choose to provide footer archive links for your MAIN archive pages only, or all archive pages (including deeper linking).
  
  Either option (main archive sitemap pages only, or all archive pages) can be enabled for guests only, which prevents them from being displayed for forum users after they are logged in.
  
  vBSEO also provides the following code, allowing you to change the default location of your footer links within your vBulletin footer template:
  
  Code:

  <!--VBSEO_ARCHIVE_LINKS-->
  

  
  
  Note: You do not have to place this code within your template. When this feature is enabled, vBSEO will automatically place the footer archive links in a default location near the bottom of your vBulletin pages.
  
  Note: Forums configured as links will not be included so that spiders are directed only to pages on your forum, not external sites.

• NEW FEATURE: Custom Redirects - 301 redirects are the search engine safe method of moving content on your server. Moving content on your forum is basically the assignment of a new URL or address for a given page of content (forum display page, thread page, CMPS page, etc).
  
  vBSEO already has built-in features for automatically 301 redirecting all of your old dynamic vBulletin URLs (those ending in .html) to the new vBSEO-generated CRUs (Content Relevant URLs; those ending in .html).
  
  vBSEO also automatically applies 301 redirects whenever the title of a thread or the name of a forum changes, since doing so alters the Content Relevant URL address.
  
  Our new Custom Redirects feature is intended for use whenever you, as a forum administrator, decide to move any of your pages to a new location and would like to ensure that the search engines replace the old page with the new one in the search index. Without a 301 redirect, the old page could be simply dropped or kept in the search index, and directing web searches to "page not found" errors.
  
  301 redirects are not easy to implement for non-technical users. They require programming or editing of your server's .htaccess file (or other settings such as http_conf).
  
  This feature takes much of the technical complexity out of the process, and is a convenient and search engine safe way for forum admins to manage the movement of important content from within the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php).
  
  Example:
  
  Code:

   'mypage.html'=>'mynewpage.html'
  

  The above is an example of the correct syntax to 301 redirect an old page called mypage.html to its new location at mynewpage.html.
  
  Custom Redirects rules syntax allows for regular expressions. The ensures that you can move multiple pages with a similar address with only one rule.
  
  Example:
  
  Code:

   'article-(d+).html'=>'articles/entry-$1.html'
  

  The above custom 301 redirect rule would allow you to notify the search engines that ALL pages with names such as article-1.html or article-2.html, etc., should have their addresses updated to articles/entry-1.html or articles/entry-2.html, respectively.
  
  For more information on the supported regular expression syntax, please see:
  Syntax for Custom Rewrite Rules

• NEW FEATURE: Add Titles to External Links - If you have posted a link on the vBSEO forums and noticed that it automatically had the title of the page linked to, set as anchor text on the link, then you have seen the Add Titles to External Links feature at work.
  While inbound and outbound linking plays a significant role in effective search engine optimization (SEO), linking alone is not enough.
  
  The actual anchor text plays an important role as well, since the search engines get a sense of which keywords more accurately describe the contents of the page based on the anchor text that is used in links to the site from other external sites.
  
  You have mostly likely seen links on the web such as "Click here" for example. The text "Click here" is the anchor text, and the address of the web page it leads to is the link or URL.
  
  Good anchor text for a link, from an SEO perspective, includes keywords that accurately describe the page, and preferably that occur on the page itself.
  
  While inbound links to your forum are more important for your SEO in this regard, anchor text on outbound links should not be overlooked.
  
  External links from your site, when linked to relevant or related content, is good for your SEO. It is a good bet that search engines do not like dead end websites with no external links. Having relevant anchor text describing your external links can provide further benefits.
  
  Keep in mind that when this anchor text is applied, it also becomes a part of your thread content. So it, in effect, also adds relevant keywords to your page, providing onpage SEO optimization.
  
  Users of forums, when posting links, rarely provide anchor text. Instead, they just post the link with a quick comment and go on their way.
  
  The vBSEO Add Titles to External Links feature detects when an external link has been posted, connects to the webpage linked, retrieves its title, and then applies the title as the anchor text for the link posted within your forum thread. You instantly have improved onpage SEO and a more highly relevant outbound linking structure.
  
  This feature can be enabled or disabled within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php).
  
  With the vBSEO Control Panel you will also find a configuration option for Add Page Title to External Domains "Blacklist".
  
  In the text box provided, you can enter a list of domains for which you do NOT want page titles to be automatically retrieved. Only the root domain is necessary to block all URLs for the site (e.g. mydomain.com will block all pages on that site from having their titles automatically retrieved).
  
  Additionally, when posting an advanced reply post or new thread, users have the option to disable this feature by unchecking the option for Automatically retrieve titles from external links, found in the "Additional Options" section of the new post page.
  
  Note: This feature is available only for vBulletin 3.5.x and later versions.
  
  Note: If the page being linked is 301 redirected, the title of the destination page after redirection will be captured by vBSEO.

• NEW FEATURE: Your vBSEO Affiliate ID - If you are a participating affiliate in the vBSEO Affiliate Program, with this new feature, you can add your affiliate ID to the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php).
  
  This will cause the vBSEO copyright notice (if you are using a linked version) to track the traffic you send to www.vbseo.com. Sales resulting from such traffic will earn you commissions. At present, all traffic you send will earn you commissions for up to 1 full year. If someone who clicks your link buys vBSEO within the year, you can earn a commission.
  
  Many of our vBSEO affiliates are earning significant monthly income just from using this feature without having to actively promote vBSEO!
  
  
  
  Sign-Up for the vBulletin SEO Affiliate Program Here.
  
  
  
  
  For more information, please check out our vBSEO Affiliate program forum.

• NEW FEATURE: URL Rewrite Settings - vBSEO, since its earliest release, has always provided complete flexibility in determining your URL format, used our advanced configuration options. In fact, there are over 130 different configuration options!
  
  URL rewriting not only adds relevant keywords to your forum URLs, but also consolidates multiple (different) URLs into ONE URL FOR EACH UNIQUE PAGE, canonicalizing all your forum pages for increased relevancy.
  
  Having one URL per resource structure in place enhances your forum's internal linking structure by creating a network of fully consistent links that allow search engines to properly find and index your site's unique content.
  
  A consistent link structure also ensures incoming links ALWAYS "create value" by pointing to main content pages and never to secondary or duplicate entries, thus increasing relevancy for your core content with each linkback (links posted by users in external sites) to your forum.
  
  The results will be significant SEO improvements for all aspects of search engine interaction including (1) crawling, (2) indexing, and (3) ranking.
  
  While our default URL Rewriting options are often all that you will need for your forum, how to achieve a certain type of URL structure is a common question among our customers.
  
  Now, with our new "Select Your Forum URLs Global Format" feature, you can choose one of your favorite vBSEO URL Rewrite presets and have it fully active in seconds, with all 130+ configuration options predetermined for you.
  
  Currently, 5 presets are included for you to select from:
  1. Default vBSEO Settings
  2. www.vBSEO.com URL style settings
  3. www.WebmasterWorld.com URL style settings
  4. www.DaniWeb.com URL style settings
  5. www.vBulletinZone.com URL style settings
  6. www.vBulletinSetup.com URL style settings
  You can select the default or checkout the forums located at each of the sites (option 2 through 5) to indicate which you prefer.
  
  To do so, simply select your desired preset from the dropdown menu, and click the Load Preset button to complete the process. All of your custom settings will be replaced with the 130+ configurations needed to achieve the selected preset URL Rewrite style.
  
  Note: You may also set a customized URL structure by expanding the Advanced Settings (click the '+' link).
  
  Caution: Once you load a preset, your custom settings will be overwritten. If you plan on experimenting with the vBSEO presets, please remember to create a backup of your custom URL Rewrite settings using the Download/Backup your Current Settings.
  
  CRITICAL WARNING: As indicated in your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php), your URL Rewrite settings should not be changed once set! Once you select your URL structure, it is STRONGLY recommended that you DO NOT change the settings again. Doing so will directly impact the URL integrity of your forum, losing valuable incoming links and search engine positioning. While our automatic 301 redirects will automatically update the location of all URLs, repeated large scale changes to thousands of forum display, thread and other URLs will most likely lead to significantly negative SEO impact or possible penalization. To avoid any negative impact, choose your URL Rewrite settings and keep them the same for the life of your forum.
  
  TECHNICAL NOTE: vBSEO URL Rewrite Presets are stored in XML files and are located within your /imports/xml/ folder. All preset files have the following naming convention:
  
  Code:

  vbseo_urls_PRESETNAME.xml
  

• NEW FEATURE: External domains "Blacklist" - This new vBSEO feature is located in the vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) in the External rel="nofollow"s section.
  
  By entering a domain name into the text box provided, links posted on your forum to the site will ALWAYS have a rel=nofollow attribute assigned to them, telling the search engines not to follow the link or index the content.
  
  This helps to conserve PageRank value that would otherwise be passed to the external site. Conserving PageRank ensures that it will be more heavily distributed within your forum pages or to other external links that DO NOT have the rel=nofollow attribute applied.
  
  Note: Even if you have the Add rel="nofollow" to ALL External URLs feature disabled, the External domains "Blacklist" will still add rel=nofollow attributes for all links to the specified domains.

• NEW FEATURE: Add Thread Titles to Showpost Links Anchor Text? - This feature applies the same settings as the Add Thread Titles feature to showpost links posted within your forum. See your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) for more information.

• NEW FEATURE: Meta Description for Member Profiles - This feature allows you to define a custom format for the meta description tag of your member profile pages. The following patterns are supported:
  1. [username] - Member username
  2. [usertitle] - Member user title ("Moderator", "Registered Member", etc.)
  3. [bb_title] - Your forum's main title
  4. [user_field_1], [user_field_2], etc. - Custom user fields as defined in the vBulletin Admin CP
     
     Sample Meta Description Phrase:
     
     
     Code:

     [username] is a [usertitle] in the [bb_title]. View [username]'s profile.
     

• NEW FEATURE: Direct Category Links - Enable this option within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) to convert forum category links to an inpage anchor URL format such as:
  
  
  Code:

  http://yourforumsroot/#category_title
  

  Doing so allows you to conserve PageRank on your forum homepage by preventing links to separate forum display pages for each category. The inpage anchored links ensure that the category link "jumps" you to the right forum category without refreshing the page, thereby not passing any PageRank.
  
  The PageRank conserved is then distributed more greatly to your forum and thread URLs.

• NEW FEATURE: Direct Links to Threads For Guest Visitors? - This feature is an SEO enhancement that is active only for guests viewing your forums. Note: This is not cloaking since it displays equally for guests and spiders.
  
  When activated from within your vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php), it removes the "-new-post" component for links to the newest posts in each forum on your forum homepage.
  
  Doing so creates a direct link to your thread pages from the homepage as opposed to the default redirect which *may* or *may not* pass Rank depending on the SE.
  
  Note: Without this feature vBSEO 301 redirects new post URL to the thread URL (anchor) for link consistency.
  
  Since this would be considered a loss in the user friendly functionality of the forum, when activated, it is only applied for guests. Logged in users will be forwarded to the new post URL as expected. You may consider this an acceptable tradeoff for SEO purposes.

• NEW FEATURE: A new configuration option has been added to the vBSEO configuration file (config_vbseo.php) allowing users running the vBSEO Google/Yahoo Sitemap Generator to define custom search engine robots to be tracked when crawling their forum.

PHP Code:

// ****** OPTIONS for vBSEO Sitemap Generator ******
 
// Additional robots detection definitions (delimited with "|")
define('VBSEO_EXTRA_ROBOTS', ''); 


• NEW FEATURE: A new configuration option has been added to the vBSEO configuration file (config_vbseo.php) allowing users to link to portal homepages rather than the forum homepage:
  
  PHP Code:

  define('VBSEO_FORCEHOMEPAGE_ROOT', 1); 


• NEW FEATURE: Beta option to use cookie tracking for vBulletin search highlight, so that user is redirected to a clean URL free from query strings.
  
  This helps with link consensus if the user then copy/pastes the link somewhere else on the web.
  
  The following option must be enabled from within the vBSEO config_vbseo.php file:
  
  PHP Code:

  define('VBSEO_SEARCH_REDIRECT',     1); 


• NEW FEATURE: A new configuration option has been added to the vBSEO configuration file (config_vbseo.php) allowing the last modification header sent from the server for each thread to return the last modified time as the time of the last post made on the thread.
  
  Since threads are dynamically generated, having a stable last modified date can help improve their appearance as fully static (i.e. .html) type URLs:
  
  PHP Code:

  define('VBSEO_LASTMOD_HEADER', 1); 


Other Updates in vBSEO 3.0 GOLD:

• UPDATE: All web server platforms (Apache, IIS, Lighthttpd, Zeus, Litespeed, etc.) are compatible with a single vBSEO download.

• UPDATE: vBSEO Control Panel is now accessible from the vBulletin admincp.

• UPDATE: New Relevant Replacement tag format provided so that HTML in replacement phrases can be stripped for use in areas such as the TITLE tag.

• UPDATE: vBSEO will now function correctly for vBulletin forums that are using the HTML version of vBulletin. A manual edit is required within the config_vbseo.php file. Default is define('VBSEO_VB_EXT', 'php');. This must be changed to define('VBSEO_VB_EXT', 'html'); for the change to take effect.

• UPDATE: New function added to allow developers of 3rd party hacks to use vBSEO to rewrite dynamic meta tags:

PHP Code:

vbseo_replace_meta($metaname, $replace_content) 


Example Usage:

if(@include_once('includes/functions_vbseo.php'))
{
vbseo_replace_meta('keywords', 'keywords replacement');
vbseo_replace_meta('description', 'description replacement');
}

• UPDATE: Extended archive links feature configuration to allow for the display of archive links on main pages and/or ALL archive pages with corresponding "For Guests Only" features. Using these settings turns of the archive links for registered users when logged in.

• Do not add Links to Archive Pages
• Add Links to the Archive Main Pages
• Add Links to ALL Archive Pages
• Add Links to the Archive Main Pages (For guests only)
• Add Links to ALL Archive Pages (For guests only)

• UPDATE: [This copy of vBSEO is unregistered and expired] message no longer displays when there is a licensing problem. An unlicensed forum will still function and a notice asking the webmaster to contact vBSEO will display via the vbseocp.
• UPDATE: vBSEO v.3.0.0 corrects issues with revisions to archive introduced in vBulletin 3.5.4.
• UPDATE: forum_path calculations now optimized to reduce performance impact for forums that have very large numbers of sub-forums.
• UPDATE: "Email This Page" feature from Thread Tools - Pre-populated URL in forum now rewritten.
• UPDATE: Forum names that have HTML embedded, now have the HTML stripped before rewriting to prevent code from appearing the the static CRU.
• UPDATE: vBSEO copyright removed from new attachment screen.
• UPDATE: Exclude copyright notice from "blunts who downloaded".
• UPDATE: Removed d= attribute from attachment URLs and added it as a static element to maintain vBulletin's default functionality.
• UPDATE: Code updated to save 1 database query on the forum homepage for vBulletin 3.6.x (showthread.php?p=x URLs).
• UPDATE: Installation instructions for server variations included in README (IIS/ISAPI_rewrite, Lighttpd,Zeus,Litespeed).
• UPDATE: Dateline info appended to attachment and avatar CRUs to prevent caching issues.
• UPDATE: Compatibility with Zoints Profile Redirect URLs.
• UPDATE: Support added for a tag to allow admins to specify where pingback posting rules are placed within the template.
• UPDATE: ecDownloads compatibility.
• UPDATE: Prevent double dashes from occurring in certain CRU instances.
• UPDATE: Security upgrades to vbseocp.php code.
• UPDATE: Modified init_startup vBSEO hook to allow for compatibility with "Exclude pages" and vBlogetin.
• UPDATE: Update compatibility for Direct Category Links with SSL (https://)
  
  
• UPDATE: Disabling vBSEO on FlashChat pages for compatibility.
• UPDATE: Acronym expansion is now case-insensitive only.
• UPDATE: vBSEO ignores redirection rules when the PDA cookie set to allowing PDA browsing of the vBulletin archive, rather than the standard redirection.
• UPDATE: Ampersand's not placed as HTML entities when placed in meta tags with the Replace the 'META DESCRIPTION' Content feature.
• UPDATE: Redirection masking for links to admin only forum display pages to prevent guests from determining the topic of the private forums within the keywords in the CRU format. This is a privacy issue overlooked by most "Content Relevant URL" publishing platforms that we know of.
  
• UPDATE: bbCode parsed out of trackback/pingback text snippets.
• UPDATE: File extension definition added to configuration file:
  
  PHP Code:

  define('VBSEO_VB_EXT',             'php'); 


• UPDATE: Config file option added to correct issue with cookies on 'Get New Post:
  
  PHP Code:

  define('VBSEO_NEW_LAST_POST_COOKIE',0); 


• UPDATE: Stop relevant replacements from being displayed on forum display page if forum does not exist.
• UPDATE: Linkbacks can be added on reply posts (but not on quick reply).
• UPDATE: Additional code file added to vBSEO package to allow for un-installation without any data loss.
• UPDATE: Remove vBulletin's default rel=nofollow from next/previous thread links since vBSEO directs users/spiders to the actual next/previous threads and not a duplicate entry.
• UPDATE: Placement of "LinkBack" menu for forums with JS not enabled.
• UPDATE: Phrases IDs renamed to have "vbseo_" prefix for clarity.
• UPDATE: Support for configuration option added to vBSEO config file to allow vBSEO to run on forums sharing a database:
  
  Code:

  define('VBSEO_CUSTOM_BBURL', 'http://www.yourforumdomain.com');
  

• UPDATE: Support for configuration option added to vBSEO config file to allow vBSEO to limit the # of characters in external page titles retrieved, when the Add Page Titles to External Links Anchor Text? feature is activated.
• UPDATE: Support for configuration option allowing vBSEO to support International 2-byte characters (e.g. Japanese):
  
  PHP Code:

      define('VBSEO_UTF8_SUPPORT',        1); 


• UPDATE: Stop rewriting URLs to private subforums posted in quotes.
• UPDATE: Social bookmarking links open in a new window.
• UPDATE: vBSEO compatible with vBulletin 3.6.x per forum sorting options.
• UPDATE: Added support for template tag allowing admins to specify the location of the vBSEO social bookmarking icons within their thread pages.
• UPDATE: "Untitled document" placed as default text for RefBacks to pages that do not have a title specified.
• UPDATE: vBSEO automatically strips redirection links used for posts in private forums for security reasons when posting content into the public forums. This is a privacy issue overlooked by most "Content Relevant URL" publishing platforms that we know of.
  
  
• UPDATE: Support for configuration option allowing vBSEO to limit the # of characters in the thread page text snippet sent via trackbacks.
• UPDATE: Compatibility with Zoints Profile links when redirecting to the Zoints network is turned off.
• UPDATE: Updated to code to make vBulletin AJAX functioning on new posts/replies run faster.
  
  PHP Code:

      define('VBSEO_SNIPPET_LENGTH',        200); 


• UPDATE: Linkback moderation for new sub forums added after vBSEO is installed, is defaulted to "Yes", instead of "No".
• UPDATE: Support for both the PHP and HTML version of vBulletin added in a vBSEO config file option (discussed in New Features):
  
  PHP Code:

      define('VBSEO_VB_EXT',             'php'); 

  REPLACE WITH:
  
  PHP Code:

      define('VBSEO_VB_EXT',             'html'); 


• UPDATE: $vbseo_bookmarks variable now available globally for vBulletin template edits.
• UPDATE: No social bookmarking icons displayed in private or members only (i.e. no guests or search engines) forums.
• UPDATE: Photopost CRU support added to functions_vbseo_extra.php.
  
  
• UPDATE: Compatibility with mySQL running on non-standard ports.
  
  
• UPDATE: 301 redirects when URLs with ?referrerid are found appended. As with the "highlight" parameter 301 redirect feature, this will help build link consensus when such URLs are shared as incoming links.
  
  
• UPDATE: Added support for definition of a custom text processing function in the vBSEO configuration file:
  
  PHP Code:

      define('VBSEO_TRANSLIT_CALLBACK',  'your_function'); 


• UPDATE: Announcement posting compatibility for vBulletin 3.6.x
• UPDATE: Disallow Relevant Replacements (RR) on forum pages that are private, for security purposes.
• UPDATE: Page titles included in linkback filtering.
• UPDATE: Google Analytics tracking code not inserted for subdomains off forum URL when they should be treated as external links for tracking purposes.
• UPDATE: Multiple Domain Support.
• UPDATE: LinkBacks have &highlight=keyword attributes stripped from them, for referrals from threads found via a vBulletin search.
• UPDATE: Threadbit "lastpost" details cached to avoid additional database query on forumdisplay pages for vBulletin 3.6.2 (+).
• UPDATE: vBSEO code performance optimizations. vBSEO 3.0.0 is the best performing vBSEO yet.
• UPDATE: Static style last modified headers for CRUs only sent on guest only pages, not for logged in users.
• UPDATE: "Automatically retrieve titles from external links" feature does not replace anchor text indicated inside of vBulletin [url] bbCodes.
• UPDATE: "showthread.php?postid=XX" URLs format for compatibility with vbportal added.
• UPDATE: Support for vBulletin scripts using .php4 extension.
• UPDATE: Changes to vBSEO un-install process.
• UPDATE: URLs included in infraction notices sent to users now rewritten.
• UPDATE: Forum ID not required in announcement URL formats for vBulletin 3.6.x users.
• UPDATE: Support for multiple pages on member profile pages added due to user infractions spanning multiple pages.
• UPDATE: Added two additional pages to the cache: (a) vbseo_linkbackbit and (b) vbseo_linkbacks.

Fixes in vBSEO 3.0 GOLD:

• FIX: Missing thread title when used in custom URL format for showpost.
• FIX: Empty page string in META tags for page 1 of forum display pages when using the dynamic meta tags option.
• FIX: PDA Login Redirect error.
• FIX: Visible thread preview for guests after being disabled.
• FIX: Stripping forward slash (/) characters from URLs when "Replace Non-English Characters in URLs" is disabled to avoid 404 error.
• FIX: Problem with popups generated from text links when outgoing link tracking is enabled.
• FIX: Escape characters () adding to double quotes in Relevant Phrases.
• FIX: Issue with "Linear - Newest First" sorting of forum display pages in previous vBSEO versions.
• FIX: "Go to last post" forwarding to the first post of the thread under certain circumstances.
• FIX: Problem with rewritten forumdisplay page URLs when a trailing backslash (/) is not added.
• FIX: Some broken links for v3Arcade.
• FIX: vBAdvanced latest threads rewriting incorrectly. XML file updated to correct issue.
• FIX: Problem with 301 redirects for forumdisplay pages in forums running vBulletin 3.0.x versions only.
• FIX: Problem with keyword separation in META tags for forum display.
• FIX: Attachment/thumbnail rewriting problem.
• FIX: Advanced user search bug fix.
• FIX: Problem with redirections to vBSEO enabled printthread URLs when the feature is disabled.
• FIX: Green validated license keys turning red.
• FIX: "VBSEO_ENABLE_GARS" error in sitemap log.
• FIX: Bug with rel=nofollow whitelist feature.
• FIX: Bug with redirection on 3rd party hack URLs.
• FIX: Path translation issue in set_self() function.
• FIX: Fix for bug causing SQL errors in 3.0.x versions of vBulletin.
• FIX: Bug with redirection to private forums after inline moderation.
• FIX: DB links conflict bug.
• FIX: "define('VBSEO_REWRITE_EXT_ADDTITLE',0);" code fixed in config file format.
• FIX: External CSS failing to load on thread page bug.
• FIX: Tags stripping in forum names causing "Invalid Forum specified." error.
• FIX: Links to member profile not re-written in Photopost gallery.
• FIX: Problem with non-English character replacement in member profile CRUs.
• FIX: Google AdSense targeting tags being applied to RRs even when disabled.
• FIX: SIDs occurring due to 3rd party hack integration (isolated case).
• FIX: HTML Entity for quotes being displayed in automatically retrieved anchor text.
• FIX: Timeout error when retrieving titles from external URLs running on an IIS server.
• FIX: Inline managing threads, empty forum display bug (no threads displayed displayed for internal, private forums).
• FIX: Function naming causing conflict between vBSEO and gallery plugin.
• FIX: Bug in passing of parameters in CRRs to dynamic script.
• FIX: Incompatibility with html_entity_decode() for older version of PHP (circa PHP version 4.2.2).
• FIX: Stopwords filtering not working when underscores (_) used a the CRU separator.
• FIX: Error message after submitting contact form.
• FIX: Member profile URLs in Photopost Classifieds.
• FIX: Mailqueue database error fix for vB3.0.7.
• FIX: PDA Login.
• FIX: Non-English characters bug.
• FIX: Remove Thread Preview Text For Guest Visitors? - Thread preview still showing in guest mode.
• FIX: Replace Non-English Characters in URLs? - Compatible with Chinese characters when set to "No".
• FIX: Add Google Analytics "Tracking External Link Clicks" Code? - Fixed for text links launching to popups.
• FIX: Escaped quotes in Relevant Replacement code:
  
  Invalid SQL:
  SELECT *
  FROM vb3_mailqueue
  ORDER BY mailqueueid DESC
  LIMIT 100

• FIX: "Linear - Newest First" Thread Display - Jumping to first post when posting a reply bug.
• FIX: "Go to last post" forwarding to first post in thread bug.
• FIX: Problem with trailing slash for incoming CRR URLs (bad redirect without the slash on a directory index).
• FIX: Broken navbar links (vBSEO 2.4.0)
• FIX: "Last Post in Thread Redirect URL Format" added in vbseocp.php in place of double entry for 'Newest Post in Thread Redirect URL Format".
• FIX: vBAdvanced cutting off thread title; creating incorrect URLs bug
• FIX: 301 redirect for old forum display URLs not working for some installations of vBulletin 3.0.x.
• FIX: Broken thumbnail images for some configurations of vBulletin.
• FIX: Extended user search error.
• FIX: Redirecting of non-rewritten printthread URLs to rewritten vBSEO thread URL.
• FIX: "VBSEO_ENABLE_GARS" warning messages in the log.
• FIX: Rel=nofollow being added to whitelisted domains.
• FIX: Custom Rewrite Rule error when rewriting vBAGallery. After logging in, the URL a user is directed to is not a correct rewrite and results in an error.
• FIX: External links title retrieval bug.
• FIX: "E-Mail This Page" vBSEO rewritten URLs bug.
• FIX: CRRs for non-vBulletin standard URLs producing error messages for links to user profiles.
• FIX: Bug with member profile links (usernames) related to "Replace Non-English Characters in URLs" feature.
• FIX: AdSense targeting tags in browser page title.
• FIX: " html entity code being included in external linking anchor text.
• FIX: Inline moderation bug causing dynamic links to display and threads not to display in forum display table.
• FIX: Function renaming to prevent conflict with 4images gallery.
• FIX: Order of Custom Rewrite Rules parameters getting passed back out of order.
• FIX: Forwarding to inconsistent URL format when rating a thread.
• FIX: Compatibility with archive code in vBulletin 3.5.4 causing error.
• FIX: chmod error on vbseocp.php
• FIX: External title retrieval feature now trims whitespace from start and end of page titles for use in anchor text.
• FIX: Double slash in trackback URLs.
• FIX: Fixed issue with numbers in CRU format for thread URLs.
• FIX: Invalid member profile links in CMPS.
• FIX: Error fixed: Fatal error: Cannot create references to/from string offsets nor overloaded objects in /home/account/public_html/includes/class_core.php on line 1263
• FIX: vbseo_filter_text() in vBSEO API.
• FIX: XHTML errors related to category anchor links.
• FIX: Extra URL prefix in URL of referring page for contact us.
• FIX: Problem with display of archive.
• FIX: Removed unnecessary backup data from the vBSEO URLs backup (vbseo_urls.xml).
• FIX: Bug with template tag feature.
• FIX: "Save" button under CRU formats in vBSEO Control Panel fixed.
• FIX: Browser loop on new post/reply.
• FIX: Type in lighttpd_rewrite.txt file.
• FIX: Links in relevant replacements text.
• FIX: config_vbseo.php file corrupted when saved on older versions of PHP.
• FIX: ?s getting appended to some forum URLs.
• FIX: JavaScript error in Internet Explorer 7.x.
• FIX: lighttpd rewrite module causing Internet Explorer problems with replies.
• FIX: Fix for error:
  
  PHP Code:

  Warning: strstr(): Empty delimiter. in /includes/functions_vbseo.php on line 3575 


• FIX: One character replacement bug.
• FIX: Problem with external site link title retrievals when a redirect is setup on at the destination URL.
• FIX: Prevent trackbacks from being added to redirected threads.
• FIX: Posting rules with linkbacks on non-standard templates bug.
• FIX: Polls being prevented from displaying due to double dashes.
• FIX: Double ?? causing session IDs to occur in Opera browsers.
• FIX: CSS failing on archive pages when forum does not have current folder added to the include path for PHP.
• FIX: Parsing out HTML entity codes from the retrieved titles used with the retrieve external link titles feature.
• FIX: When Add Page Titles to External Links Anchor Text? option is disabled, checkbox on new post or reply pages still shows it pre-selected (bug).
• FIX: Archive footer links being displayed for registered users logged in, even when it is enabled for guests only.
• FIX: Typos in descriptive text for Log & Tracking Options > Log Spider Activity in your Forums? feature in the vBSEO Control Panel.
• FIX: Meta description on GARS pages being taken from the 1st reply, not the 1st post in the thread.
• FIX: External site blacklisting not applying rel=nofollow to case sensitive domains.
• FIX: Conflict with "Smart" "Stopword Filtering" and the "Limit URL Length" feature.
• FIX: Social bookmarking icons removed from private messages.
• FIX: vBSEO ignoring whitespace in trackback fields bug.
• FIX: Usernames not being associated with posts when logged in with the "Remember Me" checkbox selected (bug).
• FIX: Error message generated when resending failed linkbacks:
  
  PHP Code:

  Fatal error:  Call to undefined function vbseo_do_linkback() in /home/hscom/public_html/modcp/vbseo_moderate.php on line 304 


• FIX: vbseocpform.php, when directly accessed, redirects to vbseocp.php to avoid security issues.
• FIX: Deleted linkbacks no longer displayed bug.
• FIX: Linkback URLs with and without / at the end treated as the same for deletion purposes.
• FIX: Compatibility problem with mysql + UTF8 charset used for database.
• FIX: Missing cell border in vbseocp.php bug.
• FIX: Archive links to non existent forums in the archive now follow options in "File Not Found" requests handling?
• FIX: Link to forum home from sendmessage.php page bug.
• FIX: Edit button on announcement bug.
• FIX: Missing forum component in CRUs included in pingbacks.
• FIX: Sub-forums labeled "A" not redirecting correctly.
• FIX: Poll URL Format not being restored on upgrade.
• FIX: Attachments not displaying when a period (.) is included in the thread title.
• FIX: Compatibility issue with Zend Optimizer.
• FIX: & symbol in listed linkback URLs breaking xHTML Transitional validation.
• FIX: Custom 404 error page failing to resolve.
• FIX: Cached forum path information not being updated when new forum is created in vBulletin Admin CP.
• FIX: Attachment Alt Tag Attribute format not being saved due to vBSEO Control Panel (vbseocp.php) bug.
• FIX: Double vBSEO copyright notice when clicking 'Go to Advanced' from Quick Reply.
• FIX: Search Engine Bots activity logging causing error when browser configured to spoof itself as a bot.
• FIX: Threaded mode bug.
• FIX: Social bookmarking icons hidden when viewing user notes (invalid links)
• FIX: Image size replacement feature bug. Not placing height/width attributes in some cases.
• FIX: Separating URL parts with "_" would prevent Smart Stopword Removal from URLs to work properly.
• FIX: mySQL memory leak.
• FIX: Smilie links broken when editing a post big.
• FIX: Bug with next post when display mode is set to threaded.
• FIX: Error:
  
  PHP Code:

  Notice: Use of undefined constant E_NOTE - assumed 'E_NONE' in /home/ddc/public_html/forum/vbseo.php on line 3 

• FIX: Error:
  
  PHP Code:

  PHP Warning: strstr() [function.strstr]: Empty delimiter. in /home/msxorg/public_html/forum/includes/functions_vbseo.php on line 1667 

• FIX: Error with display of clear.gif
• FIX: Some page titles failing to be retrieved for "Add Titles to External Links" feature.
• FIX: Forum URL moved from an public forum to a private forum not getting rewritten.
• FIX: Compatibility problem with vBA CMPS when "Include Domain Name in URLs" feature disabled.
• FIX: Quoted posts link directing to the wrong page when Thread Display Mode to "Linear - Newest First" and Number of Posts to Show Per Page to "Use Forum Default".
• FIX: URLs to private threads rewritten in email from subscriptions (privacy issue).
• FIX: Database errors:
  
  Code:

                       UPDATE session
                      SET lastactivity = xxxxxxxxxx, location = '', inforum = x, inthread = xxxxx, incalendar = x, badlocation = x
                      WHERE sessionhash = ''
  

  Code:

                   INSERT IGNORE INTO session
   (sessionhash, userid, host, idhash, lastactivity, location, styleid, languageid, loggedin, inforum, inthread, incalendar, badlocation, useragent, bypass, profileupdate)
                  VALUES
                      ('', x, '', '', xxxxxxxxxx, '', x, x, x, xx, xxxx, x, x, '', x, x)
  

• FIX: daysprune attribute getting encoded into forum display pages when option is not set.
• FIX: Defined relevant replacements (2 or more), not working if relevant replacements of lower incremental order are not defined. RR2 would not work if RR1 was not defined.
• FIX: External page title retrieval failing if link is longer than x characters bug.
• FIX: Asian characters in username causing member profile to display error:
  
  Code:

  This user has not registered and therefore does not have a profile to view.
  

• FIX: Database error:
  
  Code:

  Database error in vBulletin 3.6.4: Invalid SQL: SELECT t_id, t_time, t_src_url, t_dest_url, t_type, t_postid, t_postcount, t_threadid, t_page, t_title, t_text, t_approve, forumidFROM vb_linkbackLEFT JOIN vb_thread on thread.threadid=t_threadidWHERE t_incoming=1 AND t_deleted=0 AND t_approve=0 ORDER BY t_time desc; MySQL Error : Unknown column 'thread.threadid' in 'on clause'
  Error Number : 1054
  

• FIX: "Replace Post # Link with Permalink" not working unless Rewrite Showpost URLs set to "Yes".
• FIX: 'HTTP/1.x 301 OK' header being sent when PHP being run as CGI.
• FIX: Problem with "Goto New Post" when "Newest First" display mode is being used on forum display page.
• FIX: RPC update services not including trailing slash on URLs with directories.

vBSEO 3.0.0 GOLD now available in other languages.
vBSEO 3.0 GOLD is our first version with multi-language support. At present, the vBSEO Control Panel can be viewed in your choice of:

• English
• German (Du & Sie)
  
• Turkish
• Dutch
  
• Russian
• Arabic
  

We hope to add even more new languages in the future. Thanks to our translators for their hard work.

Download Location
All Licensed users may download vBSEO 3.0.0 Gold from their User Control Panel at the http://www.vbseo.com forums. Under the "Miscellaneous" section, there will be a link to "Download vBSEO". Or visit http://www.vbseo.com/downloads/

Installation & Upgrade
Find detailed installation and upgrade instructions within the readme.html file included in 'docs' folder of the installation package.

Thread open for discussion.

Excelent!!!!!

Hey just wondering, im pretty sure there was a post before saying i needed to download vbseo sitemap 2. has that been uploaded yet? and i put in a trouble ticket, as my footer is still saying rc8 ^^

If your product manager says 3.0.0 and your footer says 3.0.0 RC8 then that means that all of the new vBSEO files weren't uploaded. Make sure your FTP client is overwriting the old vBSEO files. Delete the old ones first if you want to make certain the new files are being sent.

vBSEO Sitemap 2.0 was released on vBulletin.org and the links are in Juan's first post above.