In the future, can you move user profiles up one level? This way we can use a robots to exclude seach engines from indexing user profiles (which they are!)...

Shane

So, and what's bad in indexing user profiles?..

I don' t know. It's strange, plus it doesn't have much to do with the content of a website,...so it make decrease rankings.

with robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /forums/user



("user..." = Disallow)

The above code is only if you have .htaccess with mod_rewrite.

You may also remove from .htaccess lines corresponding to user profile indexing.

In general, you can not hide from search spiders anything available to anonymous users. So you need to delete links to user profiles everywhere in the board, so spiders don't index them.

Would it not be possible to use rel="nofollow" on the profile links and then not waste page rank and not have them indexed?

Yes, it is possible. Probably, a good idea to implement in the next release, thanks.

Isn't it enough to include in the respective templates:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

And if yes, where?

Unfortunatelly, you can not include this in user info template, so it would be valid W3C html. miniBB uses general main_header.html for all the pages. But you can include in bb_plugins.php the following:

/* Adding new META tags for special user info template */

if($action=='userinfo') $l_meta.='<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">';

/* --Adding new META tags for special user info template */

So it will add additional META tag to the encoding meta-tag.

I personally think indexing user profiles is great. Anyway, one possible solution might be, to make the user profile link via javascript. So that the search engine doesn't see it.
Just an idea, I'm incompetent in javascript, but seen similar solution elsewhere.

We almost agree to the users which find indexing profiles as a bad idea. That's true - user's personal information do not relay on world wide web. Besides, many flooders could use the profile as the place for marketing (for example, leaving URLs to some site). In our own history, we were asked once to remove user profile from miniBB, because it was much more better indexed by one keyword, than owner's project itself (which was indexed by his nickname). So, in the next release, we will try to add "rel=nofollow" tag to all users profiles, and in user profile itself, there will be "nofollow" tags on each link you might see on the page.

In our own history, we were asked once to remove user profile from miniBB, because it was much more better indexed by one keyword, than owner's project itself (which was indexed by his nickname).
It is not a proof against indexing profiles, though. It only shows 1) how great and seo friendly minibb is 2) that users lack of knowledge on how to make his project better ranked in search engines.

So, in the next release, we will try to add "rel=nofollow" tag to all users profiles, and in user profile itself, there will be "nofollow" tags on each link you might see on the page.
I can see how useful that might be for some boards, yet if possible, I would like to have it optional (no matter what the default mode will be), or at least easily "hack-able".

Tom
yet if possible, I would like to have it optional (no matter what the default mode will be), or at least easily "hack-able" - ok, we'll think about that.