Forum Script Choices and Ease of SEO

[gifmore]

Folks

I'm looking at installing a forum but would like some advice on to the types of script and the ease of applying white hat search engine optimization techniques to the forum content and posts.

Here's what I mean:
For example, BHW forum actually has the post title in the post URL (shown in your browser bar). It is something similar to a wordpress permalink done correctly so that the title/keywords are actually shown.

Additionally, there's also the ability to have tags, rss syndication (for your forum content on other sites). I believe these features are great SEO fodder to feed the search engines with so your forum posts/pages can get indexed and possibly rank high (at least for some posts having low competition keywords).

Please share your experience on SEO for forums and if you have other good scripts to recommend that are real easy to apply SEO on, please post here.

Anyways, here are some of the better forum scripts that I'm aware of :

1) Simple Machines Forum (free) http://www.simplemachines.org/
2) vbulletin ($100 to $180 dollars) http://www.vbulletin.com/
3) phpbb (fre) http://www.phpbb.com/
4) Orca by boonex (free) www.boonex.com/products/orca/

Lastly, if you folks have any advice on ways to keep your forum website secure and having some sort of hack and spam protection, I'd be real grateful to learn from your experience and know-how BHW forum has the firewall script which is one protector I could consider

Thank you

Cheerio
P.S. Does anyone know what BHW forum runs on? i.e. the type of forum script used?

:flame: :flame: :flame:​

 

[syngenetic]

I've used Vbulletin, SMF, PHPBB, and IPB. Vbulletin is very efficient for SEO use. If you are looking something easy to work with then I'd go with IPB.

BHW is run on Vbulletin I believe.

 

[fun4uoc]

vbulletin with VBSEO seems to do pretty well.

 

[seomanifest]

if you have money to spend go with vbulletin with vbseo as fun4uoc already said, which is what i believe BHW is using. If you want to go the free route then the two I would recommend are phorum.org and nextbbs.com, phorum is a mature product and has smarty fully integrated.

 

[gifmore]

Thanks folks,

Additional ideas and suggestions on "securing" your forum against hackers, spammers, baddies and the like would also be very much appreciated

Also, if you did get "attacked" or "hacked" how would you even start to diagnose the problem and revert your forum site to full operations?

I remember that trophaeum, who is a member here at BHW forum had helped with the diagnosis and solving the problems when this forum got hacked.

Would love to learn more.

Thank you.

Cheerio

 

[syngenetic]

Thanks folks,

Additional ideas and suggestions on "securing" your forum against hackers, spammers, baddies and the like would also be very much appreciated

Also, if you did get "attacked" or "hacked" how would you even start to diagnose the problem and revert your forum site to full operations?

I remember that trophaeum, who is a member here at BHW forum had helped with the diagnosis and solving the problems when this forum got hacked.

Would love to learn more.

Thank you.

Cheerio

Unless you are running the free boards like PHPBB and SMF, you shouldn't worry about being hacked. Most exploits only work on free boards and older versions of IPB and VBulletin. Once you legally purchase a board, you receive free updates and etc for a year. Those updates keeps you updated with flaws and exploits.

Just incase of any problem, I encourage you to take regular backups of the database. No they do not have to be daily, but weekly will be good.

But yeah, don't worry about being hacked or spammed. I've ran many forums and havn't had the problem but once.

 

[twinkletoes]

vbulletin is used on the WF and I have now done several searches for specific im products and have been seeing WF come to the top of the results, especially since they added a blogging area for members.

 

[aмillionaírе]

 

[Tom__]

Unless you are running the free boards like PHPBB and SMF, you shouldn't worry about being hacked.

Wrong, PHPBB is the most secure board atm... vBulletin has more exploits posted on hackerwebsites then phpBB in total...

The reason people use vBulletin is because it has great SEO and is very stable even with a large userbase. But that doesn't mean free software can handle the same... Just look at warez-bb... they are using phpBB.

 

[mattstrike]

From a security standpoint, there are a ton of things that you can do, but one of the best things you can do on any website is to add an additional layer of protection by using .htaccess to lock down the admin area. At a minimum, a second layer of password protection, but if you can get away with it, and IP restriction as well.

I don't know what the percentages are, but a large number of hacks are just because the admin area is not secure.

Beyond that, follow the best practices for the software you install. A lot of people wind up CHMODing everything to 777 during the install, because it makes things work, but this leaves you open to all sorts of hacks, especially if you are running on a shared server. Virtually every major software platform will have a thread somewhere where they will tell you how to lock everything down for maximum security.

Finally, consider VPS or dedicated hosting. Shared hosting always leaves you open to vulnerability, because someone else' site will get hacked, and then they will exploit that compromised site to attack yours "from the inside".

 

[syngenetic]