Is there a way of indexing links in XOOPS that is friendly towards search engines or a module I can add or else another script that I can run alongside xoops. The site I am building is essentially a link directory and as I try to get reciprocal links the common thread with so called 'quality' websites is that I am not really providing a link to them at all because of the way search engines look at things. Any help on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

i think the shorturls hack is what you maybe looking for, you'll have to search as i can't remember the links for it, but it's on the forum somewhere if u search..

i think for this method tho, your server needs to be setup to allow .htaccess and mod_rewrite functions.. not all hosts allow it so u may need to look into that)

Gee that was quick...lol. I had a look at that and because I know almost nothing about code of any sort I am looking for something very very simple. I found one called phpFlexlinks which is not too bad but I would prefer somethng that alphabetises links as they are added. I don't know if this is possible or not. I guess I am just a bit lazy and prefer leaving the smart stuff like coding to the smarter ppls lol

Would using the sections module for each link category and then listing the links in each section be a viable idea or would this not make any difference to how the search engines index the pages. The other thing I have noticed in looking around is that a lot of the scripts that say they are SEF have the full url as text below the description. Would this help at all. I know so little of these matters that any ideas are better than the idea I have lol.

I am the same at the moment advertising i have a links directory yet they are not searchable by google

Occasionaly i ask for a reciprocal link and get decline on the fact it has no <a="">

Quote:

ShortURL helps a bit. The higher the PR of your site, the higher the chance that Google will deep crawl your site. So-called "friendly" URLs have no effect on deep crawling your site. Google has a complex ranking system. Links and Contents have been "identified" as the most effective ways of increasing your PR.

As of mystery of "?" in the URL, here is a quote from Daniel Dulitz of Google:
Quote:

BTW, anyone who wants to give ShortURL a try, can find several TIPs and the package from Xoops Tips

After having a look around at some different sites and at the way the different modules work, I have come up with an idea and would like to know if anyone thinks this would work. I downloaded wfsections, as that seemed a fairly popular module and it seems to be highly customisable. Here are the questions and ideas I have had.

1. Are the pages produced as articles static html. this may seem like a fairly basic question to a lot of you, but I am not a programmer and know very little about code except the very basics about html that I have taught myself.
2. Is there a way to disable the downloads and uploads section of this mod.
The idea I have had as far as using this for linkd indexing is this....because it is set up in what I will call three layers the sections(categories} would become the link categories, the articles name would be the link subcategories and the article itself would be the list of links. As I can add images at any level this really suits my needs. As an example I would have a section called
All Creatures Great & Small
with articles in it title eg
Birds
Dogs
Horses
then each individual article would carry the list of links.

Does anyone think this is feasible, see any drawbacks, know if it would make the links more visible to search engine thus allowing reciprocal linking etc etc

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated and I thank you one and all for your help in advance.

I have started using wfsections to list my links and would like some feedback please before i go too much further with the relisting process. Please start with the All Creatures Great and Small link as I have only put a few in to see how it works. I have not added any images yet, but if the feedback I get is positive I will put category images and either screenshots or buttons from the websites I list. I am trying to make the links more search engine friendly which is why I have done it this way. Please tell me it you think it easier to navigate the links by using wfsections the way I have set it up or if the old mylinks module is easier to use. Post feedback here or in my Whats the big idea forum please. Also if anyone knows if this makes the links easier for bots please let me know.

thank you to anyone who helps with this. I do appreciate it. The more feedback I get The better, even just a simple yes if you think its workable or no if you don't.