vBulletin 3.x Canonical not showing in threads & home, showing only in forums

[Marvin Hlavac]

I'm quite sure canonicals were working sitewide in the past, but I just noticed a few minutes ago that they now only appear in forums, and they are missing in threads and home (and most likely elsewhere, too). Disabling & re-enabling canonicals in vBSEO doesn't fix it.

I suspect I have broke this feature myself while editing some vBulletin templates in the past, and only now noticed it.

Any hints where I could start looking to fix this?

Thanks in advance.

[Brian Cummiskey]

If you create a new style with no parent, do the canonicals appear under that style?

[Marvin Hlavac]

Hi Brian,

A couple of months ago I disabled (reason described here) the following two vBSEO plug-ins:

- vBSEO Forumhome Complete
- vBSEO Showthread Complete

Only today I realized they are responsible also for the canonical feature. Not a big deal though.

Now, instead of enabling the two plug-ins, I'd prefer to add the canonical tags to threads manually. I just experimented with adding the following line to the showthread template, right above $headinclude:

<link rel="canonical" href="$vboptions[bburl]/showthread.php?t=$threadinfo[threadid]<if condition="$pagenumber>1">&page=$pagenumber</if>" />

It seemed to work as expected, but I'm not sure if referencing the original vBulletin URL is the best way. When I check the source code in the web browser, I see the correctly re-written URL by vBSEO.

Is the above approach a good one, or is there a way for me to reference the vBSEO URL directly?

Your help and time is very much appreciated.

[Brian Cummiskey]

I'm not sure.. I'll flag this for a developer to look at.

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

Yes, this approach is fine - all necessary details are cahced by vBSEO so it won't add extra server load.

[Marvin Hlavac]

Thanks very much Brian.