Anything I ought to know before building a forum with SMF?

And for the record http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://www.roadsidegallery.com/
I will leave it at that until you show me something you have developed yourself.
Nigel

Edit: terribly sorry amanamission. It was not my intention to clutter your thread with a pissing contest. I was trying to be helpful in what I call a literal sense. You have a great idea.

 

For the record -> your site -> You designed -> http://www.roadsidegallery.com/forum/

oops... seems the forum is broken

 

Nice try, I neglected to remove the footer link to the forum... do you see any sort of link to the forum other that that,, no,,, there is no forum... sorry I left some fodder for you to feed on... link removed... it does not address the issue........ so while your at it google photos of route 66 and see what you find.

thanks for the heads up.... and again, you can chime in when you show us something you have done. Until then, stfu.
Edit:fixed, thanks again.
Nigel

 

Okay guys, calm down. This geek wrestling, as entertaining as it may be, is not helping me choose a script.
Can we keep to the features of forum scripts? Pretty please?

 

When Bryce shows me one thing he has done that is up to snuff, I will cut him some slack. Until then, he asks for what he deserves. And for the record, I can fire off properly coded stuff all day long. A broken link to a non existent page does not equate to a non compliant mess.

Nigel

 

STFU ??? I beg your pardon??? You're the fool who started up on this thread trying to rip on me. The OP asked for "samples". Pardon me here but I still have not seen anything worthy of you telling me to STFU yet.

btw, what do you mean to search Google for photos of route 66. Let's see, do you mean the girls with the large breasts or do you mean you have ranking for "photos of route 66"... However, look at "route 66 photos" - you're nowhere to be found... so you're gaming the title tag. Big whig SEO expert we have here... Got any more tricks in your magic bag Felix ?

You got me beat buddy, I'm outta here... Ponder this...


Congrats. It's all you Nigel... It's all you...

 

We were addressing roadside gallery when I told you to search for photos of route 66(did you bother to look at the site?), it comes with the territory when you write proper code.. I did not haze you, nor did I intend to. I merely pointed out that it is not forward thinking to develop something for said demographic with software that is riddled with bad markup. You opted to take it personally, make an ass of yourself, and bothered to troll the web looking for photos of retarded folks. Which, by the way, I take offense to as well. So, like I said earlier, show us something you have done, that is up to speed, or shut the hell up.

Show us something you have done that belongs in said conversation or pipe down.. is that better? You have no basis from which to argue with me from, until you show me some code, markup, one site.... without hundreds of errors, you are fighting a loosing battle.

Nigel

 

Properly coded has NOTHING to do with SEO which is what the OP was asking about. Do you really think that Google is going to waste processing cycles to make sure a page's html and css validate?? The whole purpose of RSS feeds is to seperate the design layer from the content layer. ~ DOH ~

Who cares what kind of code "you can fire off", the topic was discussing CMS systems such as SMF and their strengths and weaknesses. It wasn't about you and it wasn't about properly validated html.

Here you go... a few examples...

Matt Cutts blog = Does not validate

Shoemoney.com = Does not validate

techcrunch.com = Does not validate

Digg.com = Doesn not validate


I guess those sites are all "crap code" also - You're a fountain of mis-information, I pity any clients you might be fleecing. btw, the url I posted earlier is #3 for "moneymaker forum". I also have the #1 spot for the term "blog rate" and that's out of 211,000,000 results and guess what? It doesn't validate... So you can STFU now....

 

OK, I tried to be nice...next one who fires off in this thread will be reported for being off-topic and harassing.
Take it outside, fellas.

 

You just posted the top 4 sites on the planet. Matt Cutts for instance helped write the algo for Google, why on earth would he care if his wordpress template validates? That has nothing to do with anything. It's common knowledge that the Google home page does not validate... and it consists of virtually nothing. My point from the get go is people should care. The thread starter has a sweet demographic he is concerned about. There is no problem for him to produce something that is web wise, just as caring. In my opinion it should be accessible(wcag) and standards compliant(I think you know what that means), which makes it more useful to everyone.

And for the record, standards compliant markup separates the men from the mice.

Nigel.. See PM and try some decaf.

And the thread started with nothing to do about seo

"Anything I ought to know before building a forum with SMF?
Title says it all, I've never made a forum before and I'm thinking about it. Any comments on Simple Machines Forum script, reputation for bugginess or vulnerabilities, anything?

I must say I'm surprised I don't see it more, especially with Vbulletin licenses so steep. What exactly is this free script lacking that makes you pay? The features look pretty complete to me.

I would especially like to hear from those who went with VBulletin after trying SMF, or admins using SMF with good results. Please post your sample sites."

 

I find this comment strange? what is so great about rss feeds for seo? I read a post recently where an expert said the first thing he does when setting up a blog is disables all rss feed stuff on all of his sites. and also uses robots.txt to disallow /feed/

 

Well, I'm starting to see where SMF falls down, but I don't see a good alternative yet. Nigel's enthusiasm aside, I'm not sold on Vanilla, though I'd love to hear other testimonials.
For the record, SEO URLs and other features are definitely a part of what I need.

 

Yeah, geek p*ssing contests are indeed entertaining.

Your needs are quite specific. I'll not get into the whole SEO argument (as I have my own personally take on this), however you would do well do search for "XHTML valid CMS" or some other criteria via Google.

SMF is a strong package, but it can be a bear. I especially HATE how the core team decided to replace the shockingly brilliant and simple template code used back in YABBSE days (wow, was templating simple!). So, really, the question is do you want to be up to your elbows in code soup? If not, SMF may not be what you want. Don't let SEO be the primary factor for your solution - you need to consider what you want your site to actually do FIRST, then the rest will come from that.

Just a quick note on dynamic URLs and SEO...

Remember, when Google and other search engines originally came on scene, CMS programs were not as widely used, and plain HTML sites still were quite common. Honestly, search engines didn't know how to spider or read generated links that had question marks and other characters. However, Google and other engines are matured far beyond that now, and a CMS urls (even ugly ones) are now spidered. I think "human friendly URL" is actually a better term than SEO (because today's modern engines can handle generated URLs far better than they used to). Also, XHTML-compliance is, again, probably your real objective (code errors, etc., are more problematic than an ugly URL). That said, please do search for the solution that best suits you. I just don't want you to become so SEO-obsessed that you overlook an excellent package in the process.

And remember, Apache re-write and other tools may be at your disposal to pump out good URLs from whatever solution(s) you choose.

In the end, quality of content, layout, etc., will determine whether you have a good site - as it always has.

 

Okay, your comments are well considered and I appreciate your candor...I have been coming to the same conclusion about SMF.

I would like to clarify that "search engine friendly" urls are still better than dynamic php codes strings...because they contain anchor text. It's not just about indexing. It's how the url is indexed. it's about bringing traffic to each thread instead of just to the main page. It's about interacting with the search engine to be a natural extension of it.

The ideal would be a forum script that makes URL's from the three longest words in the topic. That would help the indexing of the thread for the basic topic.

I know this is true because I've seen it with blogs.

I wish more programmers would come around to understanding this...although in way I don't, because the advantage would be gone if everyone had it.

I really don't understand why this functionality isn't built into more forum scripts.

 

First off, thank you for taking my comments in the spirit in which they are intended.

Your question has a simple answer - because open source programmers (who often times are not making much money off of their considerable efforts and therefore have "day jobs") don't have the time to cater to your needs or mine. Instead, we must be proactive and a little creative. Hey, what can you expect for zero dollars? *lol*

Yes, you are right, "friendly" URLs are better. No one is arguing that. Just my only concern is when I hear people talking SEO more than "does the site work right". All the SEO in the world won't make your site good. Now, focus on all aspects of quality (including SEO as one of MANY factors), and you're well on your way!

Again, take everything with a grain of salt and your own thought process. I'm just saying, I've seen a lot of people make bad decisions they later regret because they focused so closely on one thing they lost sight of other important factors. Just don't be one of those people.

Okay, off the soap box I go!

Now, back to the main issue, as I said, if you don't want to spend money, your choices are of course very limited. I'd just suggest going to Hotscripts (or some other large script indexing site) and just freakin' test stuff until you find what suits you. Also, look for contributed code - some users and other developers have written modules, add-ons, plugins and other code that could be what you need.

If you see a forum that has everything you pretty much want but is missing, say, SEO-friendly URLs, ASK! You'd be amazed how many are looking for the same thing, they just never made their wishes public. Someone could actually have the code you need. And, if this really means something to you, you may need to end up paying a professional coder to do the job for you. That's what I usually do - in the end, you spend a little, but overall it is a LOT cheaper than going fully custom, and you get exactly what you want.

Again, hope this helps!