Is this forum script SEF?

I run an all female (lezzie) forum. I may switch to this one, but I need to know it this forum script is Search Engine Friendly? PLEASE tell me soon!

Roxanne :-)

I run an all female (lezzie) forum. I may switch to this one, but I need to know it this forum script is Search Engine Friendly? PLEASE tell me soon!

With this search term "my little forum" you will find this site on the first places on google.de.

With the extension "pepDiully" to find one of the spam postings from last week (it is the name of the poster) you will find exactly the post of him/her. It is only five days old (Thu 2007-08-02 to Tue 2007-08-07):
"my little forum" +pepDiully (also google.de)

The HTML-source code is valid and structured. In my opinion the HTML-output of this software is search engine friendly.

TschÃ¶, Auge

I'm looking at "content" though, not the names of posters or the link at the bottom which Google always looks at. It's the content that is going to get us found!

Take this link for instance, at random:
http://www.scheihingfamily.com/forum/forum_entry.php?id=58

for the sentence: Hello, Aiden is here... i put a few pics up in the gallery

content is not in Google, but of coarse the "my little forum" link is and always will be. Please, make URL's "friendly" so the the content SEF!

Dear Don!

I'm looking at "content" though, not the names of posters or the link at the bottom which Google always looks at. It's the content that is going to get us found!
Take this link for instance, at random:
http://www.scheihingfamily.com/forum/forum_entry.php?id=58

I hope this is not your forum (it's spammed up to the roof).
Anyhow, it's a 1.x Version.

for the sentence: Hello, Aiden is here... i put a few pics up in the gallery

OK, this might be an effect of double content.
Google's sitesearch lists only 60 out of 400 posts (which isn't that bad, because the majority of post contain 'badwords', which I cannot post here anyhow). Search engines might also get the 'impression' the forum is just a link-farm; any administrator has the duty to remove the 'vermin' from the site (in your example forum there are many 'via...'-links from May 2007 online).

Consider posting only for registered users.
Use the badword-list in the admin-section.
Update to either 1.7.3 and activate at least the Match-Captcha for the contact-form - and if you want to keep the forum open for everybody to post, also for posting.
Add rel="nofollow" to links generated by the forum's scripts (this doesn't help you, but at least doesn't improve the pagerank of spammers.
Or migrate to the 2.x Branch - although I would wait until it's finished...

content is not in Google, but of coarse the "my little forum" link is and always will be. Please, make URL's "friendly" so the the content SEF!

OK, first look at this thread in the forum of the 1.x-Branch.

Example (Google-search for a very specific term):
The first link points to my forum containg the term in a post's heading, and the second one points to a post containg the term only the content of a post.

So I don't think mlf is not SEF.

--
Cheers,
Alfie (Helmut Schütz)
BEBA-Forum (v1.8β)

Thanks Helmut for the post. I guess that was a poor example I used wasn't it?
That's not my forum thank Heavens! Anyway, I see your point and did the trick with he robots text file too. Just as long as MLF is SEF, I am one "happy camper". Do you think that URL's like (example):

www.example.com/all-about-mercedes-automobiles.htm

could ever be implemented in future plans for MLF? Do you think that would help with SEF?

Thanks again my friend,

Don

Dear Don!

Thanks Helmut for the post.

You are welcome.

I guess that was a poor example I used wasn't it?

No, it was wonderful... :-D

Do you think that URL's like (example):
www.example.com/all-about-mercedes-automobiles.htm
could ever be implemented in future plans for MLF? Do you think that would help with SEF?

I don't think it will be worth the effort. It would mean:

a quite massive change in the code, and
fiddling around with Apache's mod_rewrite module (being not that user-friendly) - which every Admin would have to do differently based on his/her file structure.

Have a look at these two threads from the phpBB-Communtity and an Able2Know-Board.

Even with short URLs the best you may get is something like
www.example.com/Cat-X-Thrd-Y-Pst-Z.htm
A blown up mlf plus any sophisticiated RewriteRule in .htaccess simply don't 'know' that this particular post deals with 'all-about-mercedes-automobiles' (the subject line will no be of any help either).

Since Google has no problem in indexing all posts - if you are avoiding double content - I would suggest to leave it just the simple way. People on the net are used to copy-paste long URLs.
Another problem would appear if you are submitting a sitemap to Google or Yahoo (what I did a couple of months ago). If more than about 5 Rewrite-Rules are to be followed in .htaccess, at least Google issues a Warning (whatever that means). So that's maybe another reason not to opt for short URLs.

--
Cheers,
Alfie (Helmut Schütz)
BEBA-Forum (v1.8β)

I'm looking at "content" though, not the names of posters or the link at the bottom which Google always looks at. It's the content that is going to get us found!

That's right. It was only an example, not a real search string. My intention was to show that MLF is indexed through the search robots.

TschÃ¶, Auge

Thanks Auge, love this forum script! Please always keep it SEF....

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