Well, the best thing would be to forums/, the next best thing would be to index.php without the question mark. Hmm, maybe some people do not use directory indexes so perhaps it is safest to point to index.php I don't know. Perhaps it is only a cosmetic difference and perhaps not, it depends on how search engines deal with the question mark. Anyway it looks bad to include a '?' in an url if it isn't necessary.

Also if the forum points to 'index.php?' one would have to make all other links to the forum to this url (and not 'forums/'), otherwise it would be duplicate content.

Perhaps I can change this easily though, I haven't looked so much at the templates yet.

Edit: Seems we wrote at the same time Tom :-)

I had left with the impression that the search engines must be liked by the other software, not the software to be liked by the search engines.

The main goal of a BB is to be a BB, not to serve to Google Corp. or to whatever other searcher.

THE EPOQUE NOW IS AN EPOQUE OF BROKEN LINKS, so the FORUM is the important unit, not the search engine. WE are to like Google or not, not the opposite.

I agree to Ivan. There is too much hassle aroung SEO nowadays. Guys, it doesn't depend much on have you question mark or not - search engines are programmed by more advanced people than us. And they determine duplicated content with or without crosslinks and any other stuff. Besides if you don't have quality content, removing question mark will not help you to get gigher rank.

Remember that miniBB designed not for Google, but for users. For users, it is suitable to click on Forums link for going to the first page of forums. What about question mark? Don't you know that you can easily RENAME index.php to WHATEVER filename you want, if you integrate forums with another PHP scripts. It could be forums.php, it could be community.php. I doubt then in this case, the link to forums without setting the filename will work.

It's a reason for automatization and versatility, and trust me, index.php? or index.php are the same files for search engine, just because question mark is reserved programming symbol in URL.

If you don't like this question mark - then simply remove {$l_menu[0]} from main_header.html and put the correct link to forums manually. Welcome to the simple board.

From a little research I have done, I also believe that question mark doesn't matter.

Ivan: this is not to serve Google. It is to serve your own interests. If I get higher ranking, I will get more participants to my forum. I don't care if it is google or any other way, if I can get more users that way, I go for it. Now, if I would have a forum just for few friends, or for a college class, or whatever similar, I wouldn't care, but I have an open public forum and the number of users makes difference (most of the time).

Just as an addon to previous posts, to show that google is taking these url's as two separate pages (and I don't care about pagerank, that's just to show they are different):

minibb.com/forums/ - pagerank 6, 7 backlinks
minibb.com/forums/index.php? - pr4, 509 backlinks

(Btw. on the minibb forum search, google has chosen to display the second url. )

It is the same with 'index.php' and 'index.php?' Google thinks of them as seperate pages.

Edit: Now I could post.. Wonder why. Perhaps because I changed language in my settings or because I posted a new topic in between.

For users, it is suitable to click on Forums link for going to the first page of forums.

Well, noone has said anything about not having a link to the first page of the forums. Just about changing the url of the link.

If you don't like this question mark - then simply remove {$l_menu[0]} from main_header.html and put the correct link to forums manually. Welcome to the simple board.

Okay, I'll probably do that :-). Still I really like minibb for its search engine friendliness. I think it is the strongest point of the forum software.

Tom
I recommend to forget about PR thing in general. Sometimes I've read interview with Google authors, and they said PR means something only for really big and famous sites. Besides, PR is updating very rarely. Concentrate on your content, not what you see in Google bar.

Now I could post.. Wonder why. Perhaps because I changed language in my settings or because I posted a new topic in between - I am sure you have used some of the antiflood phrases or words.

If you don't like this question mark - then simply remove {$l_menu[0]} from main_header.html and put the correct link to forums manually. Welcome to the simple board.

I tried to change that link but the the separators did not show correctly on all the pages unfortunately. Maybe there is need to modify on other pages as well if one wants to change this.

Just put this link not in the same place where separators are.

P.S. I found a thread about "Question mark". As you see it is posted more than year before, and question mark haven't distrubed miniBB forums to be well ranked in Google, and this thread also will not change our opinion on it.

I did place it before the l_sepr variable but still it showed two °° in a row in the menu on the subpages. Even if I just remove {$l_menu[0]} the separators will be messed up like this. Maybe I wrote the link in the wrong way or something.

Using your fantasy a little bit allows to do whatever you want.

Example:

templates/main_header.html - this will be new menu code:

<tr>
<td class=caption2 colspan=2><b>&nbsp;{$l_sepr}&nbsp;<a href="./">Forums Home</a>&nbsp;{$l_sepr2}{$l_menu[7]}{$l_menu[3]}{$l_menu[2]}{$l_menu[1]}{$l_menu[4]
}{$l_menu[5]}{$l_menu[6]}{$l_sepr}</b></td>
</tr>


bb_plugins.php - paste this code:

if($action=='') $l_sepr2=$l_sepr; else $l_sepr2='';

Of course, specify forums location in <a href...> tag in the main_header.html

Thanks team, I guess my fantasy is a bit lacking ;-). I'll try this then.. I'm a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to seo and now I can hopefully put my mind to rest :-)

I recommend to forget about PR thing in general. Sometimes I've read interview with Google authors, and they said PR means something only for really big and famous sites. Besides, PR is updating very rarely. Concentrate on your content, not what you see in Google bar.

Absolutely, complete agreement - I am not one of those who live by pagerank :)). That example was just to show that google thinks of that two url's as separate pages (otherwise both would have had same pr and same number of backlinks).

That example was just to show that google thinks of that two url's as separate pages (otherwise both would have had same pr and same number of backlinks). - I won't doubt this; however, if Google indexes identical pages twice, it doesn't mean that the site's software is the reason.

I am keeping idea about question mark instantly, and probably, in the future, will implement it kinda more intelligent way.

Hi,

I saw on few sites some links like this one www.name.com/aaa/abc/tdsa
How can I make this for my site and others ? I heard something about mode rewrite, but I don't find any examples. Can you help me ?