PLease do not just block this post!

It is a serious request for something Fireboard really must address if it wants to be implemented on anything other than HObby sites.

"As someone running a semi-serious site where the forum is a key component it is incredibly important that I optimise Fireboard for SEO.

I use sh404sef for SEF URL's.

Fireboard populates the title tag, although I would like some control over that.
(currenty its hardcoded as "sitename-thread title - board title".

But the big missing thing is that Fireboard does not populate the meta description tag.

My users generate dozens of postings every day and I want each thread registered in Google.

At the moment google hides many of them assuming they are duplicate pages because the tag is empty (or i can fill it with standard text).

I really really could do with Fireboard populating the meta description with the first couple of hundred characters from the post.

I found the part of the fireboard code that populates the title tag and tried to add the code for meta description with no luck.

Surely anyone who has a serious forum and wants to succeed in SE rankings needs this also.

Any chance of getting this feature added??"

In response to replies on previous post......

1) Yes sh404SEF does support metatags but only on standard content items.

It would require someone to write a sh404sef plug-in for fireboard for this to work.
That would be one solution.

2) To moderator who locked topic and said search for SEF posts.

This is not really a SEF URL issue. It is a meta tag issue.

Fireboard already auto-populates the title tag. Which is great.

But thats half the job.

It means right now that for EVERY single fireboard user, when ANY of their fireboard pages are index and displayed in Google the 2 line description is garbage.

So there are no doubt 100s of thousands of fireboard entries now indexed in Google with garbage in the description.

Please please consider this as it will hugely benefit the web success of every fireboard user and therefore will help fireboard themselves.

Many thanks, Ian Rispin, founder - www.wikivorce.com

I suggest adding a tracker requesting better Meta Tag support for SEO.

joomlacode.org/gf/project/fireboard/tracker/

I just submitted a tracker for this. But a I agree that this is a must have function. A quick question though, in which file does FB specify the title tag?

It was mentioned that(currenty its hardcoded as "sitename-thread title - board title".) I'd like to change that order.

The first step towards search engine optimization should be eliminating the double page loads, because it causes lower pageranks as the site speed is a very important SEO factor.

LocaLiceR wrote:
The first step towards search engine optimization should be eliminating the double page loads, because it causes lower pageranks as the site speed is a very important SEO factor.

While I agree somewhat, right now all the content is viewed pretty much as duplicate content since the description is the same for every item. For me that's a larger problem.

That sounds gloomy Perhaps it would be better to install FB on a subdomain.

I am very newbie with php programing but here is an easy and partial solution for meta description I made if this can help someone else with Google SEO wile waiting next version of Fireboard:
(please note this is for fireboard beta, but you may adapt it for latest version)
Open /components/com_fireboard/template/defaut/view.php
Find on line 471:
Code: :


//set page title if on Mambo 4.5.2+
if ($leaf->parent == 0) {
$mainframe->setPageTitle($fmessage->subject . ' - ' . $fbConfig['board_title']);
}


After, ad:
Code: :



//set meta description hack by AlexandreFrance
$mosConfig_MetaDesc = ('Read our forum for the topic ' . $fmessage->subject );



I guess it may be not a clean php code as I am not a programmer, but this code work for my website and give me nice meta description on my fireboard!


Have fun

Alexandre

You may also try this code to get a better result:
[code:1]$mosConfig_MetaDesc = ($objCatParentInfo->name.' '.$objCatInfo->name.' - Read the message ' . $fmessage->subject );[/code:1]

If your are good with php, please try to find another hack to get first 15 or 20 words of the topic in meta description + another hack to show meta description on category views.

Another hack I just found to complete meta description hack:

Open listcat.php

Find:
[code:1]// set page title
$mainframe->setPageTitle($fbConfig['board_title']);[/code:1]

Below, ad:

[code:1]//set meta description hack by AlexandreFrance
$mosConfig_MetaDesc = ('Read our ' . $fbConfig['board_title']);[/code:1]



Open showcat.php
Find:
[code:1]// set page title
//$mainframe->setPageTitle( $objCatParentInfo->name.' - '.$objCatInfo->name.' - '.$fbConfig['board_title'] );[/code:1]

Below, ad:


[code:1]//set meta description hack by AlexandreFrance
$mosConfig_MetaDesc = ($objCatParentInfo->name . ' - ' . $objCatInfo->name);[/code:1]


Please feel free to give another tip if you can do better,

Best regards,

Alexandre

Here are the results as asked on another post:
(Edit: I could NOT Copy/Past of page source because of fireboard... but replaced "" by "" )


(!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd")
(html xmlns="www.w3.org/1999/xhtml")
(head)



(title) - Re: Comment proceder? - Forum tarot voyance ésotérisme(/title)
(meta name="description" content="Forums Tarot divinatoire Tarot de Marseille: Interprétation - Voir le message Re: Comment proceder?" /)
(meta name="keywords" content="tarot" /)

(meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /)