Canonical URL

Post by **Extensions Robot** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 5:02 am

Modification name: Canonical URL
Author: soumik
Modification description: Adds canonical URLs to index, viewtopic and viewforum pages as specified by Google (Specify your canonical - Official Google Webmaster Central Blog).

A <link> tag is added to the <head> section of the page.
Modification version: 1.0.0
Tested on phpBB version: 3.0.6

Download file: canonical_url.zip
File size: 31.17 KiB

Modification overview page: View

The phpBB Team is not responsible nor required to provide support for this modification. By installing this MOD, you acknowledge that the phpBB Support Team or phpBB Extension Customisations Team may not be able to provide support.

-->Modification support<--

Post by **DavidIQ** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 5:02 am

Modification validated/released

Notes:

soumik · Post by **soumik** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 5:02 am

Download latest version : Here

This mod adds <link> tag is added to the <head> section of the page.

For the index page :

Code: Select all

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/" />

For forum pages :

Code: Select all

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/viewforum.php?f=X" />

For threads :

Code: Select all

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/viewtopic.php?f=X&t=Y" />

For global threads* :

Code: Select all

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/viewtopic.php?t=Y" />

Normally, global threads will have canonical URLs like this :

Code: Select all

http://www.example.com/viewtopic.php?t=X

If you want the global threads to have canonical URLs with an "f=Y" query string, you just need to make a little change to the code. After installing the mod, open viewtopic.php.
Find :

Code: Select all

	'U_CANONICAL' 	=> generate_board_url() . "/viewtopic.$phpEx?" . (($topic_data['topic_type'] == POST_GLOBAL) ? '' : "f=$forum_id&") . "t=$topic_id" . (($start) ? "&start=$start" : ''),

In-line Find :

Code: Select all

''

Replace with :

Code: Select all

"f=Y&"

Replacing 'Y' with the forum id of the forum you want your global threads to belong to.

DoYouSpeakWak · Post by **DoYouSpeakWak** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 7:06 am

Congrats on the fast validation. This is great mod

Ahri89 · Post by **Ahri89** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 4:42 pm

In viewforum.php I found several results of:

Code: Select all

$template->assign_vars(array(

, please help me

Thanks for this great mod

soumik · Post by **soumik** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 4:56 pm

You can add it after any of the results. The effect will be the same.

Ahri89 · Post by **Ahri89** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 5:22 pm

soumik wrote:You can add it after any of the results. The effect will be the same.

Thanks!

demon327 · Post by **demon327** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 5:40 pm

Is there any thing chanded since the last RC?

soumik · Post by **soumik** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:34 pm

No, nothing has been changed as of yet since the last RC. The latest release link is something I did for the future.

CaNNon_ · Post by **CaNNon_** » Thu Dec 03, 2009 2:21 pm

very nice!

alahamdan · Post by **alahamdan** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 2:13 pm

Hello and thanks for the Mod

I think its a very important one, but i have a question

For some reason when i search for a topic title in Google, i find that Google index my phpbb forum topics as following:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36308

While i noticed your using this format as canonical:

viewtopic.php?t=35035

So if Google preferred this way, why don't we use it in this mode?! or it wont make a big difference?

======

Another Issue is about the amp; thing.

I noticed when you go to a topic, choose page 2 for example, the canonical URL will contain amp; in it, so when u take it, use in browser, it will take you to the first page of the topic, not to page 2.

I went to viewtopic.php and did the following:

Code: Select all

"f=$forum_id&")  removed amp; so it became "f=$forum_id&")

And

Code: Select all

"&start=$start" : '') removed amp; so it became "&start=$start" : '')

Now it wont show amp; and the canonical link is valid, takes you to the right page, so any problem with doing what i did? or its ok?

By the way, im Google webmasters tools, Google report amp; as a parameter asking you if you would like to ignore it, i think Google don't like this parameter!

Thanks again for the mod, its better than playing with the robots.txt

soumik · Post by **soumik** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 3:38 pm

alahamdan wrote:Hello and thanks for the Mod

I think its a very important one, but i have a question

For some reason when i search for a topic title in Google, i find that Google index my phpbb forum topics as following:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36308

While i noticed your using this format as canonical:

viewtopic.php?t=35035

So if Google preferred this way, why don't we use it in this mode?! or it wont make a big difference?

The "f=1" query string is for the board to track the forum the user is visiting. This mod generates canonical URL in the format "viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1". Only in case of global threads, it generates canonical URLs in the form "viewtopic.php?t=1", because global threads are present in every forum and it will be a duplicate indexing issue.
There is even the option of making the canonical URLs of global threads belong to a particular forum.

About the & issue :
'&' is the HTML code for '&'. '&' will get parsed to '&' when read by the browser. The 'amp;' part is not extra. If you have doubts, please see the source code for any page and view the URLs that contain '&'.

alahamdan · Post by **alahamdan** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 3:47 pm

soumik wrote:
alahamdan wrote:Hello and thanks for the Mod

I think its a very important one, but i have a question

For some reason when i search for a topic title in Google, i find that Google index my phpbb forum topics as following:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36308

While i noticed your using this format as canonical:

viewtopic.php?t=35035

So if Google preferred this way, why don't we use it in this mode?! or it wont make a big difference?
The "f=1" query string is for the board to track the forum the user is visiting. This mod generates canonical URL in the format "viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1". Only in case of global threads, it generates canonical URLs in the form "viewtopic.php?t=1", because global threads are present in every forum and it will be a duplicate indexing issue.
There is even the option of making the canonical URLs of global threads belong to a particular forum.

About the & issue :
'&' is the HTML code for '&'. '&' will get parsed to '&' when read by the browser. The 'amp;' part is not extra. If you have doubts, please see the source code for any page and view the URLs that contain '&'.

thanks for your reply.

Yes i agree now about the first part.

But about amp; , the browser do not parse it, i tried it my self, i saw the problem happened with another person too. so i tried removing it from the code, and it now include the link in away when u take and paste in browser it works fine!

So removing it as i mentioned above may cause a problem? or its fine?

And thanks again for the important mode.

Peter77sx · Post by **Peter77sx** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 3:58 pm

If you type it into an URL of course it's not going to work. I also had a little doubt myself, but after reading a bit more on Google related subjets, I think search engines are smart enough to figure it out.

Look at the Bullet next to the topic title of this thread and then view the page source. you'll see •

.

soumik · Post by **soumik** » Sat Dec 05, 2009 4:05 pm

As Peter77sx rightly said, ASCII special characters like ©, @ and & will be present in the source as '©', '@' and '&' respectively. See : http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/ASC ... /index.php

phpBB • Free and Open Source Forum Software

Canonical URL

Canonical URL

Canonical URL

Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

Re: Canonical URL

advertisements