This document describes the feature set available in CommunitySEO [For IPB] v1.0. With over 75 configurable settings, and several major features in CommunitySEO [For IPB] v1.0, we're sure you will be impressed with all that it can do.

• Friendly URL support for all IPB default pages, with configurable options in the ACP
  • Limit the number of characters in the URL
    
  • Remove 'stopwords' (common words search engine spiders ignore) plus ability to configure stopwords
    
  • Specify word separator in generated urls
    
  • Ability to use semicolon instead of ampersand for query string argument separation
    
  • Ability to add topic title, forum title, and member name into rewritten urls
    
  • Support for all IPB components, including Chat, Blog, Gallery, and Downloads
  
  
• Google Sitemap generator
  • Ability to use mod-rewrite urls, or standard urls
    
  • Ability to use gzipped files
    
  • Ability to exclude forums from sitemaps, regardless of Spider permissions
    
  • Ability to rate forums, and topics in forums, higher on a per-forum basis
    
  • Ability to weight priority based on various data
    
  • Sitemap can (optionally) include: forums, index page, topic view pages, help files, user profiles, stats, memberlist, calendar, search page, gallery section, blog section, downloads section
  
  
• New "Search Engine Spiders" group to allow you to configure permission-based settings for spiders specifically, which will not affect other members of the site
  
• New "Spider" skin to improve ability for bots to read and index your site. Skin is light on javascript (not all javascript removed, skin is still fully functional), light on images, and has improved keywords in place of common images. Unnecessary html comments removed, and unnecessary layout/formatting removed (i.e. empty "footer" rows at the ends of various tables).
  
• List of user agent to spider mappings that you can add in your Admin Control Panel to better track bots indexing your site
  
• Improved spider activity logging, including referrer, user agent, and page requested
  
• robots.txt file included with package
  
• Ability to configure global "keywords" and "description" meta tags
  
• Ability to configure per-forum "keywords" and "description" meta tags
  
• Social network integration - add various social network links to your topic view pages to promote your site, and promote interaction with your site from your members
  
• Acronym expansion in posts - allows to automatically expand terms to help bots index them on your site (i.e. "LOL" could be expanded to "Laughing out Loud")
  
• Stats inflation - allows you to show extra "fake" guests online, and extra "fake" members online. Allows to increase topics and replies as displayed on the site by a multiplier. Inflating stats can make your site seem busier than it is - the larger the site, the more important it must be right?
  
• Google analytics integration - just add your analytics account number to enable this feature. Additionally, automatically track external links through Google analytics if desired. Allows you to track incoming, outgoing requests, and other various statistics.
  
• Similar Topics block - show a "similar topics" block at the bottom of each topic view page (when similar topics are found) to help spiders navigate similar content on your site
  
• Linkback + Pingback + Trackback support
  • Allow members to submit a list of trackback links when posting a topic. Each link will be sent a "ping" to notify them of the reference
    
  • Automatically parse topics for links to other sites (pingbacks), and send a ping to notify the site of the reference
    
  • Log incoming requests from outside links to topics
    
  • Ability to moderate linkbacks in the Admin Control Panel
    
  • Ability to display linkbacks at the bottom of the topic view page
    
  • Ability to display trackbacks and pingbacks at the end of each post
  
  
• Ability to block duplicate content from being indexed (i.e. printable topics and the lofi version of the site)
  
• Ability to add nofollow attribute to duplicate content links
  
• Ability to add nofollow attribute to external links
  
• Ability to block error pages from being indexed, and ability to redirect spiders to a specified page when an error page is reached
  
• Ability to add numerous contnet-relevant meta tags, including "start, next, previous" links (when in a view, forum or topic, that has multiple pages), author, alternate (for lofi page), audience, global, revisit-after, distribution, rating, robots, googlebot, bookmark, identifier-url, copyright, help, prevent smart tags, keywords, and description. (IPB automatically adds in RSS-related meta/link tags, and the Blog component already adds in Blog-specific meta/link tags)
  
• Add 301 header to redirect requests
  
• Redirect requests for dynamic urls to static urls (useful if your site has been online and many pages have already been indexed before using this System to avoid duplicate content penalty).

When using the Rewrite portion of this System, you can force all topic and forum links to use the actual topic and forum names. We were researching available Invision Power Board SEO options, including mod_rewrite 'modifications' available, and noticed that the only ones we could find simply rewrite the URL to contain keywords from the displayed text. In Invision Power Board, this is *not* always the topic title (i.e. the "Latest Post: " links when viewing the list of topics in a forum, or the list of forums itself), and as such you end up with multiple urls that lead to the same topic. With CommunitySEO if you specify to rewrite topic, profile, and forum links, the links will always use the the topic title, member name, or forum name itself.


There is no other package on the market for Invision Power Board search engine optimization that adds so much value to the base package. Installer makes installation as simple as possible. Unfortunately, due to the way IPB is coded, and the lack of hook support, there are some file edits necessary to install this package. You simply cannot add all of the functionality we've added without modifying the core Power Board files. We've ensured, however, that the number of files and the edits themselves are as simple as possible. Additionally, we will be providing installation services with the release of CommunitySEO 1.0 Final to assist our customers in getting this system running as smoothly as possible.


We will begin seeking Alpha 1 testers very soon. Stay tuned!