Its something very odd to compare PhpBB and WordPress, since they both are different platform of open source blogging and community activities. But i am going to compare both of them. The comparison is going to be done on the basis of the of the SEO (search engine optimization).

PhpBB SEO

When we talk of SEO for PhpBB, we are calling up one of the toughest thing to be implemented in it.

Why it is so difficult to be implemented? The reason is simple, no one likes to mess with the codes, specially when it comes to a live board. Is their any easy way available to do it? Yes their is an easy way to implement SEO over a fresh PhpBB forum, their is a pre-modded version available.

By default the URL’s are not custom writable in PhpBB, but the SEO mod enables the URL rewriting. And the new feature is equally powerful as the URL rewriting in wordpress.

It eliminates zero duplicate after the forum with full 301 URL redirect.

Well, this is the only SEO option available for PhpBB, and PhpBB-SEO is doing a great job in managing and continuously improving the SEO experience for the PhpBB users. And we personally recommend all our users to use PhpBB along with PhpBB-SEO to our users.

WordPress SEO

Implementing SEO on wordpress is one of the easiest task to be performed by a wordpress owner. Their are some of the great plug-in that makes this task very easy. In wordpress we have a lot of choices available, but we will be focusing mainly on the two top plug-ins for it.

All in one SEO

Its a great plug-in and is updated quite frequently, and is one of the pioneer of the SEO for wordpress. This is something we recommend all the wordpress bloggers.

Some Features:

• Canonical URLs
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.
• Fine tune Page Navigational Links
• Built-in API so other plugins/themes can access and extend functionality
• Provides SEO Integration for WP e-Commerce sites
• Nonce Security
• Support for CMS-style WordPress installations
• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on WordPress blogs
• For beginners, you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• For advanced users, you can fine-tune everything
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.

Platinum SEO

Well its a “predecessor” of All in one SEO since they are competitors of each other. This is also a great option for wordpress and a should have for the users. They have a great 301 redirect but they adds their site URL in the footer. And it provides a migration option from All in one SEO to Platinum SEO i.e. their own plug-in.

Some Features:

Automatic 301 redirects for any permalink changes

Canonical URLs

Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines

Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically

Option to specify meta description and meta keywords tag for categories and tag pages (http://techblissonline.com/wordpress-categories/)**

Option to turn off Page title or Post title rewrites for any particular post or page (http://techblissonline.com/page-title/)**

Option to turn off Page title or Post title format for any particular post or page.

Helps you avoid duplicate content

Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page

Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack

You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not satisfied with the current permalink, change it through Settings>Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about loss of Page rank or google penalty.

Platinum SEO plugin will take care of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location.This is a new essential feature, not present in All in one SEO

Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noodp, noydir, noarchive, nosnippet meta tags to any post/page.These options are not available in All in one SEO Pack.Find out why this option to set post/page level Meta Robots Tag useful?

Note: Both these are great plug-ins that helps in optimizing your blog for search engines. But at a time their should be only one plug-in functional (active) on a blog.

And if you require help with the installation of these SEO services you can take help of our professional service for wordpress and PhpBB.

Ad Placement on Index page of CA Vintage style is one of the most easiest modification compared to the placements on viewforum and viewtopic pages. This placement needs putting your ad code just before and after the specific line of code. Well we will be taking two zones over here also, zone 1 and zone 2. Look at the screenshot for the exact positions of the Ads zones.

Ad Placement Before/ After Category on Index Page

Both the zones could be explained in this explanation itself, since both the ads are to be placed before and after the line.

Step1: Open the index_body.html file.

Step 2: Look for the following line in the code.

<!– INCLUDE forumlist_body.html –>

Step3: Just above and below this line paste the following code, replacing your ad goes here with your ad code.

{$CA_BLOCK2_START}Advertisements{$CA_BLOCK2_START2}
<center>
your ad goes here
</center>
{$CA_BLOCK2_END2}
{$CA_BLOCK2_END}

Check the attached screenshot for the placement of code for specific zones, all instructions are covered in the images.

Step 4: Save the changes made to the file.

We hope this is the simple modification for ad placement on the index page of the forum. If you have some problem with the placement contact us here on the official forum for CA Vintage.

This is a continuation post over the ads placement in CA Vintage style. In the last we have covered the Ads Placement in topics for CA Vintage style and this post focuses on the ad placement in the forum page. The ad is placement as a sky scrapper on the left hand side of the forum page, and on the top and bottom of a forum, check the attached screen shot for the exact location. We have specified two zones for better understanding, zone1 and zone2.

Ads in left side of the Forum

In zone 1 the ad appears in the left side of the viewforum page as an sky scrapper.

Step1: Open the viewforum_body.html file.

Step 2: Look for the following line in the code.

<!– INCLUDE overall_header.html –>

This line is the first line on the viewforum_body.html code page.

Step3: Just after this line paste the following code, replacing your ad goes here with your ad code.

<table width=”100%” cellspacing=”1″>
<tr>
<td width=”160″ align=”left” valign=”top”>
{$CA_BLOCK2_START}Adverts{$CA_BLOCK2_START2}
<center>
your ad goes here
</center>
{$CA_BLOCK2_END2}
{$CA_BLOCK2_END}
</td>
<td align=”left” valign=”top”>

Step4: Now look for the following line in the code.

<hr />

Step5: Add the following lines just above these lines.

</td>
</tr>
</table>

Step 6: Save the changes made to the file.

Ad just after forum List

In zone 2 the ad appears in the bottom of the viewforum page, just after the forum list. Refer Zone 2 for the position in the screen shot.

Step1: Open the viewforum_body.html file.

Step 2: Look for the following line in the code.

<!– INCLUDE jumpbox.html –>

Step3: Just above this line paste the following code, replacing your ad goes here with your ad code.

{$CA_BLOCK2_START}Advertisements{$CA_BLOCK2_START2}
<center>
your ad goes here
</center>
{$CA_BLOCK2_END2}
{$CA_BLOCK2_END}

Step 4: Save the changes made to the file.

We hope this modification is simple and attractive with respect to the ad placement on forum page. If you have some problem with the placement contact us here on the official forum for CA Vintage.

We have been asked by some of our users to provide ad placements in CA Vintage style ever since we implemented the style, few days back. Well with the styles provides by stsoftware.biz customization is something that could be achieved in an easy go. This post only focuses on the placement in viewtopic page, where the actual content lies in a forum. We have divided the ad placement in two zones on the viewtopic page. Check the screen shot for the zones and placement.

Ads in the first post

In zone 1 the ad appears just before the content in the viewtopic page of the forum. Its a very lucrative position that increases the click through rate for any forum. This position gives you great results if an rectangular ad block is placed there. Well lets focus on the ad placement first, later we will cover the optimization.

Note: The ad appears only in the first post not to the replies made to it.

Step1: Open the viewtopic_body.html file.

Step 2: Look for in the following line in the code.

{postrow.MESSAGE}</div>

Step3: Just before this line paste the following code, replacing your ad goes here with your ad code.

<!– IF postrow.S_FIRST_ROW –>
your ad goes here
<br/>
<!—ENDIF –>

Step 4: Save the changes made to the file.

Ads after first post

In the Zone 2 the ad appears just after the first post i.e. in-between the content body and the first reply; check the screen shot for exact position. This is also one of the best position that a forum owner love to have. Lets look at the steps to be followed:

Step1: Open the viewtopic_body.html file.

Step2: Look for the following lines in the code

</div>
<!– END postrow –>

Step3: Just before these lines add the following code, replacing your ad goes here with your ad code.

<!– IF postrow.S_ROW_COUNT == 0 –>
{$CA_BLOCK_START}
<center>
your ad goes here
</center>
{$CA_BLOCK_END}
<!—ENDIF –>

Step 4: Save the changes made to the file.

Well the ad placement is completed over the viewtopic_body.html page for the CA Vintage style. We will be covering the ad placement in the viewforum_body.html and index_body.html page. These customizations are really going to be awesome and we are sure you will love them.

If you faces any problem leave a comment, and if you want to discuss over this style entire its official forum for it.

I have worked for various entertainment forum clients and one of their very basic requirement is video’s for the site. There are lot of mod’s available over the Phpbb.com, but they are mainly available for YouTube and Google videos. If you like to add any other video site you can create custom BB Code for it. But creating custom for every video site is a very tedious job.

Well we have a mod that is still in beta over PhpBB3 forum, but we are using it successfully for almost a year for our clients. The beauty of the mod is that you need not make any code modifications in the files, simply upload a file and create a custom code.

The installation is a simple few step installation:

1. Upload the file (video.php) in the root of the site.
2. Now Login into forum’s admin control panel.
3. Select Posting tab from the top tabs.
   
4. The window provides you with a option of adding new BB code, check the extreme right of window.
   
5. Now fill up the available block/form. Add the BB Code that want to use in the BBCode Usage.

   [video]{TEXT}[/video]
   
   In the HTML replacement block enter.

   <script type=”text/javascript” src=”video.php?link={TEXT}”></script>

   In the help line, enter the mouse over for the video BB Code.

   Add the Video

   In the settings, check the display box.

   Lastly, submit.

   

There are a large number of Videos that are supported by this BB Code, a partial list of the supported video sites includes YouTube, Google video, daily motion, metacafe. MySpace, starsclips, yahoo, photo bucket, filefront, stage6, veoh, vidilife, game trailers, vidiac, game spot, mega video, vimeo, Game videos, tu.tv and God tube.

We hope that you find might had found your favorite video site in the list.

Download the Mod from Rapidshare || Uploading.

I am a user of BlueHost webhosting for almost a year now, and i am very much satisfied with their services. This time i decided to use their inbuilt software/services for implementing the Phpbb forum. Their were two software choices available for implementing the forum, one was the simple scripts and the other one Fantastico De Luxe. I preferred Simple Scripts for the implementation as their are lot of reasons for choosing them, we will discuss about that later.

Installation of PhpBB Forum

I will be covering the installation step by step to make it easy for others to implement.

Step 1: Login into your control panel.

Step 2: Go to Software/Services, and open simple scripts. You will be redirected to a simple scripts page.

Step 3: Select PhpBB forum from the available forum choices.

Step 4: Now you will move to installation options, select install for a brand new installation.

Step 5: In the installation preferences page, select the stable version of PhpBB. Select the domain for which you want the installation, and select the path (here i have selected forum, if you want it in root than leave it blank). Just enter the path and it will automatically create it over the server, you need not manually go to file manager and create it.

Agree to the GPLv2 License agreement, and complete.

Step 6: The forum is created and the details are available to you, use those details to login into your forum.

Their are certain changes that needed to be implemented on a new forum, we will be covering that in our upcoming post.

Till than you can try our Floating Twitter “Follow” Badge on PhpBB Forum post to implement a twitter badge, just like the one we have on our forum.

Their are lot of blogs that have a floating Twitter Follow badge on the side of their pages. I was asked by one of my client to implement it’s PhpBB forum. For those who are familiar with PhpBB must be aware of the mod’s that are available for it, and complexity in their installation, as you are dealing directly with the codes modification. Moreover, i was unable to find a Mod for Twitter Badge.

Then i decided to do it the wordpress way, i explored the available options for twitter badge over various wordpress sites and fortunately i came up with a solution to do it for PhpBB. I will be covering this step by step, just follow these steps to implement a twitter badge on your site.

Create a Twitter Badge

First thing is to have a twitter badge, and this badge could be created through Go2web20. Just fill up the form and get the code by clicking on the update code button. You should have a twitter account to fill up over here, if you don’t have one get it from Twitter.

Implement the code on Forum

Now You have the code for the Badge, next work comes to implement it on the forum. In PhpBB3, you can edit the file in admin panel itself. If you are using PhpBB2 you could edit it from the control panel or on your desktop and than transfer it on server through ftp.

1. Edit, overall_footer.html file in PhpBB3 or overall_footer.tpl in PhpBB2
2. At the bottom of the file you will find
   

   </body>

   </html>

3. Place code before these line.
4. And update the file.

   Note: The badge will not appear on IE6.

We hope you like this customization from our end, we will be coming up with such more in the future.