vbseo -- questions and concerns

i've scoured the vbseo forums so far and this product seems like it could be absolutely fantastic. however since it is closed source and since vbulletin is crucial to my web operation i wanted to address certain issues myself to make sure that this product is appropriate for both my current and long term needs.

if the vbseo staff can address these issues i'd greatly appreciate it.

1. my board is already hacked as i use the vbadvanced.com CMPS extension and the vb geek's (thevbgeek.com) GAL and GARS extensions. in the future i will probably add even more extensions -- many of which may not be as widely utilized in the vbulletin community as the vbadvanced and vbgeek products. i have read that vbseo is compatible with the geek's and vba's products, but what about other vb extensions? if not, can they at least peacefully coexist?

2. suppose for whatever reason i need to uninstall it. i am assuming that to minimize search engine damage in this case my best bet would be to 301 redirect the URLs that vbseo has rewritten back to their native URL? for instance if vbseo rewrote a URL of mine to mysite.com/category/thread.html and i needed to un-install, i should 301 redirect that URL to whatever the native link of that URL is (i.e. mysite.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1). or is there something i'm missing?

3. i read on the forums that there were some issues with registration keys. i could not understand the entire conversation, but i just wanted to make sure that i can install this on my live server and on my testing environment? i like to have a testing environment that is identical to my live environment so i would want to install this hack on both. possible?

thanks for your time and attention.

Hello and welcome to the boards,

i have read that vbseo is compatible with the geek's and vba's products, but what about other vb extensions? if not, can they at least peacefully coexist?

- vBSEO is fully compatible with GAL (Geek Auto Linker)
- It has native support for GARS (Geek Article & Review System) - i.e. your article URLs will be rewritten as well
- We will be adding native support for GeekMart as well.

vBSEO's non-intrusive installation makes it compatible with almost every mod/extension/plugin available for vB. It generally will not prevent them from functioning & in most cases the vBulletin URLs they create will also be rewritten.

Note: If you find a hack that is not yet vBSEO compatible, please report the issue within our forums.

vBSEO's CRRs (Custom Rewrite Rules) can be used to convert other URLs created by 3rd party hacks, etc. vBSEO's primary function calls can also be called directly so that vB hackers can add native support for vBSEO.

See here for "Syntax for Custom Rewrite Rules":
Syntax for Custom Rewrite Rules

See here for "vBSEO Functions for Extensibility":
vBSEO Functions for Extensibility

2. suppose for whatever reason i need to uninstall it. i am assuming that to minimize search engine damage in this case my best bet would be to 301 redirect the URLs that vbseo has rewritten back to their native URL? for instance if vbseo rewrote a URL of mine to mysite.com/category/thread.html and i needed to un-install, i should 301 redirect that URL to whatever the native link of that URL is (i.e. mysite.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1). or is there something i'm missing?

I do not anticipate that you will want to un-install vBSEO!

However, if (at any point in the future) you would like to uninstall and revert back to your vB dynamic URLs, you can use the following .htaccess directive to 301 your *default* vBSEO thread format to the original vBulletin thread forum:

PHP Code:

RewriteRule ^[^/]+/([0-9]+)-.+\.html$ showthread.php?t=$1 [L,R=301] 


i like to have a testing environment that is identical to my live environment so i would want to install this hack on both. possible?

Yes, it is ok to run your vBSEO copy in a test environment as well. When purchasing vBSEO, just enter both instances into the input field provided and we will make sure it gets added to the DB. Users who have already purchased can simply send a request via PM to a Crawlability team member.

Thank-you for the great questions.