We from www.musiker-board.de are using a static index.htm before you can enter the board. It's for Google Pagerank reasons. A little trick by using the archive got us a +1 Pagerank in Google.

Due to the fact that you don't really need a link to the archive Index when you're in the archive already(probably due to a search machine) I changed that link.

(I posted it into Template Modifications because in fact it's at least optical a Template change, move it if you think different ;)

* Open forumroot/archive/global.php

Find:


$navarray = array("<a href=\"./\">$vboptions[bbtitle]</a>");


Replace it with:

href=\"http://www.musiker-board.de\">$vboptions[bbtitle]</a>");


Or whatever URL you wanna have there.

Now in at least our case 410 000 .htm pages are linked to www.musiker-board.de and that gonna raise your pagerank of that site.

You can also try that with the index.php of your forum but Google likes .htm much more..

Thanks for sharing the tips with us. :)

++ reputation

I am sorry, but I do not get it?
Aren't both links resulting in the same link that a 'guest' / 'bot' would see viewing page source?

I am sorry, but I do not get it?
Aren't both links resulting in the same link that a 'guest' / 'bot' would see viewing page source?
Before the modification it points to /vb/archive/index.php
After the modification (in my case) it points to http://www.musiker-board.de

The higher the number of static pages linking to one static page is, the higher your Google Pagerank will be. Google doesn't only count external links but internal links, too (as long as they're indexed at Google) Though there are some algoryhtms to pretend people creating millions of static pages pointing to a chosen page but using the forum archive seems to work quite fine..

Doesn't every page have a footer with a link to the main site? :)

Doesn't every page have a footer with a link to the main site? :)
Yes but the Archive hasn't got such a link and however the Archive is much more Google friendly :p

THANK YOU
This is very cool

Changing that link defeats the purpose of the breadcrumb on the top of the page. The link is supposed to link back to the Forum Index. Instead, why not add the link to your actual site homepage in front of the Forum Index link?

Changing that link defeats the purpose of the breadcrumb on the top of the page. The link is supposed to link back to the Forum Index. Instead, why not add the link to your actual site homepage in front of the Forum Index link?
Would be an idea. But I don't need users browsing my Archive, usually you switch to the actual forum instead of browsing the Archive. So for me it doesn't matter if I loose a link to my archive index. That way people get directly into the forum and don't even try to browse the Archive ;)

The Archive is handy though for those browsing on PDA's, for one example.