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garfy

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Registered: 01/02/05
Posts: 437
Location:EU
First I must say, my most 2 successful sites are built in geeklog, because it was the first cms that I used, I made many sites in Joomla and Drupal and wordpress so I know the difference.

Geeklog could be one of the best out there, but it is not. It is barely holding on, on other forums people are switching to Drupal or Joomla.

I know it takes a lot oF time, money to take care of it.

But Geeklog is so different than other CMS. It is a small self sufficent package. YOu only need to install forum and that is it.
THat is the beauty of geeklog.

But the biggest issues are, and I don't know why they are not addressed:

1) Urls are not SEO friendly (some are, but most of them are not)

2) You can't set the custom meta tags (description and keywords), SO geeklog looks funny compared to rival CMS
I mean every freaking CMS has SEO option solved, not geeklog.

3) phpbb bridge was wonderful and nobody is taking care of that.

4) installation is clumsy and difficult

If somebody would address these 4 issues, the geeklog would be my inner. I would use it for many sites, but now I use rather drupal or Joomla.

Only 4 issues are preventing geeklog to catch up the competittion. I mean is it so hard to do it?
I know Dirk is working like 24/7, I don't know how he manages that, but somebody should address these issues.

BECAUSE GEEKLOG IS A CUTE LITTLE PACKAGE THAT HAS POTENTIAL!!! :doh:
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Dirk

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Registered: 01/12/02
Posts: 13073
Location:Stuttgart, Germany
Quote by: garfy

4) installation is clumsy and difficult


:rtfm: Patience, please.

bye, Dirk
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Chase

Anonymous
If any one can help me with URL rewrite that would be great.

2 months back i started a citizen journalism site. Its been a hit. NOthing would have made it possible other then geeklog.

what do i need to do to put the topic in the url?
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1000ideen

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Registered: 08/04/03
Posts: 1298
Quote by: Chase

what do i need to do to put the topic in the url?



Just change the topic ID when editing the story, that`s all. Try to do that in Drupal!
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winnerdk

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Registered: 04/24/05
Posts: 339
Location:Panama City, Republic of Panama
determined
I would like to echo the original concerns voiced in this post. I have several friends who run successful websites using other CMS platforms, and all of them are constantly trying to get me to drop Geeklog in favor of something else. So far I have resisted, but I am constantly frustrated, basically every time I have to interface with the "guts" of the Geeklog CMS.

Geeklog has always been a major pain in the butt to install, and the same thing goes for most of the plugins. As a simple user and not a programmer I see this as an issue of technical writing. The instructions and documentation assume the users know too much (we don't) and I almost always have to rely on the Forums to get the little details straight. I'm learning, but most people will just walk to another platform rather than fighting through it.

So here's the request - Please give me a form to fill out and "presto" it's installed. I should not have to go hacking around inside of the guts of files to make stuff work. If your instructions start off with "go to line 7943 of file named whatever.php and modify the "true" to "false" if you want your eggs sunny side up..." You get the point. I don't want to have to hack anything, change any settings, or gut any files. Just make it work for us dumb guys, Mr. programmer.

SEO - I worked on the SEO issue for months, literally. Now it seems like I've got it licked, and when I post an article (my website is primarily a news outlet) it gets picked up by all of the major search engines in a matter of minutes. So, Geeklog can be SEO friendly but I had to do a lot of work to make it that way. And If I could pull it off (with a lot of help) then the changes I made should be part of the standard package.

Every time SEO issues are addressed, it seems like there is a battle between programming form and function and SEO. We users care more about SEO than the details of smooth programming. SEO is what it's all about when your website is a business. If Geeklog is not SEO friendly, then most webmasters will choose another platform on that issue alone. Making Geeklog SEO friendly should be a major priority. It is for the users, and if you're either downplaying or ignoring SEO then that's a significant mistake.

It all comes down to user interface. The other CMS platforms have made the trade-off - easier user interface at the cost of reduced capabilities. My humble advice - keep the capabilities and build the user interface to be idiot proof. There's enough of us idiots out here trying to keep up, but it's hard.

"Patience?" It's April, 2008. What's the schedule look like?

Don
http://www.panama-guide.com
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Blaine

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Registered: 07/16/02
Posts: 1232
Location:Canada
Why don't you share your lessons learned so others can benefit. If your not a programmer then maybe you can help with some documentation. The documentation and Geeklog as a whole can only improve if community members come forward to help. The present and past contributors all volunteer their time. It's great to point out the holes and fustrations but we need help filling them.

If you don't have Wiki access, then you only need to register on the wiki or yell and we will certainly get you access.
Geeklog components by PortalParts -- www.portalparts.com
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garfy

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Registered: 01/02/05
Posts: 437
Location:EU
Quote by: Blaine

Why don't you share your lessons learned so others can benefit. If your not a programmer then maybe you can help with some documentation. The documentation and Geeklog as a whole can only improve if community members come forward to help. The present and past contributors all volunteer their time. It's great to point out the holes and fustrations but we need help filling them.

If you don't have Wiki access, then you only need to register on the wiki or yell and we will certainly get you access.



Why is it so hard to fix SEO issues, you only have to add meta desc and keywords, url are already rewritten. yo can add custom url names and custom page titles also.

Why is it so hard, it would require just a small patch.

I am so sad because geeklog is used form my most scessful site and it is perfect as a small package, but guys installation is a bummer and SEO also .

So is anybody move hiss ass, because I am not a programmer so I cant help, I would if I would be able
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Dirk

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Registered: 01/12/02
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Location:Stuttgart, Germany
Quote by: winnerdk

"Patience?" It's April, 2008. What's the schedule look like?


:rtfm: Geeklog 1.5 status, posted a mere 10 days ago.

bye, Dirk
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winnerdk

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Registered: 04/24/05
Posts: 339
Location:Panama City, Republic of Panama
Quote by: Dirk

Quote by: winnerdk

"Patience?" It's April, 2008. What's the schedule look like?


:rtfm: Geeklog 1.5 status, posted a mere 10 days ago.

bye, Dirk



Great, thanks. Looking forward to it.

Don
http://www.panama-guide.com
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winnerdk

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Registered: 04/24/05
Posts: 339
Location:Panama City, Republic of Panama
Quote by: Blaine

Why don't you share your lessons learned so others can benefit. If your not a programmer then maybe you can help with some documentation. The documentation and Geeklog as a whole can only improve if community members come forward to help. The present and past contributors all volunteer their time. It's great to point out the holes and fustrations but we need help filling them.

If you don't have Wiki access, then you only need to register on the wiki or yell and we will certainly get you access.



I would love to. But, there are still problems I have not been able to fix. For example I had a problem awhile ago with the formatting of the Forum plugin that I simply had to "give up" on and develop and awkward work-around to make it functional. I could write that in the Wiki if you like, but I don't think it will help anyone very much.

Don
http://www.panama-guide.com
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beewee

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Registered: 08/05/03
Posts: 969
Location:The Netherlands, where else?
Quote by: Chase



what do i need to do to put the topic in the url?



You better don't try that because you'll create duplicate content. I used the url "mydomain.com/topic_id/story_id" but it gave me lots of troubles because you have to change the paging in lib-common.php, and Google still indexed the "&topic=" and the "mydomain.com/article.php/story_id" pages despite the robots.txt.

I'm back to the normal structure, and Google is still indexing my new stories within 20 minutes sometimes...

A simple hint: just increase the amount of stories on the frontpage, to get more content on each page. I've set it to 15 stories per page right now.
Dutch Geeklog sites about camping/hiking:
www.kampeerzaken.nl | www.campersite.nl | www.caravans.nl | www.caravans.net
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winnerdk

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Registered: 04/24/05
Posts: 339
Location:Panama City, Republic of Panama
Quote by: beewee

Quote by: Chase



what do i need to do to put the topic in the url?



You better don't try that because you'll create duplicate content. I used the url "mydomain.com/topic_id/story_id" but it gave me lots of troubles because you have to change the paging in lib-common.php, and Google still indexed the "&topic=" and the "mydomain.com/article.php/story_id" pages despite the robots.txt.

I'm back to the normal structure, and Google is still indexing my new stories within 20 minutes sometimes...

A simple hint: just increase the amount of stories on the frontpage, to get more content on each page. I've set it to 15 stories per page right now.



I've got mine set to 100...works great.

Don
http://www.panama-guide.com
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Sunny

Anonymous
Hi,

I have been trying to make GeekLog Seo friendly since some time now. I have done the following

1. Learned to add dynamic meta to all articles. Its being detected by google.

2. reverse the title from <sitename>-<Title> to <title><sitename>

3. add meta to homepage (in one of the blocks)

4. Convert all story titles in the homepage to a link

5. Rewrite the URL's without the ? mark. http://www.geklogsite.com/article.php?story=21321321 to http://www.geklogsite.com/article.php/21321321

But still Google takes days to index articles on my site. Another site i started with wordpress (iphonehelp.in) enjoys fantastic response from search engines. Any advice??

the site onlygizmos .com
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winnerdk

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Registered: 04/24/05
Posts: 339
Location:Panama City, Republic of Panama
awake
1. Learned to add dynamic meta to all articles. Its being detected by google.


How did you do that? Or, what did you do to make it happen? I would like to do the same thing. Is there any way to make it automatic rather than manual?

I take "runs" at SEO every now and then, and this is one of the issues I would like to tackle.

Thanks.

Don
http://www.panama-guide.com
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garfy

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Registered: 01/02/05
Posts: 437
Location:EU
Wordpress is using ping to alert other sites, and geeklog also but maybe here is the catch
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Sunny

Anonymous
@grafy: Can we have such a Ping service in Geeklog by some plugin>? or manually? Such pings work for google?

@Don: Here is the hack, in the second part of the article (while composing a new story) after you are done with all the editing and content press "Source" - and add the meta code <head><META name="description" content="--"> <meta name="keywords" content="---"> </head>. And save the article without clicking source again. (Because whenever the FCKEditor comes to rich text mode the meta vanishes. everytime your edit the article you need to take care and put the meta back in)

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Dirk

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Registered: 01/12/02
Posts: 13073
Location:Stuttgart, Germany
Quote by: Sunny

@grafy: Can we have such a Ping service in Geeklog by some plugin>? or manually? Such pings work for google?


:rtfm: Sending a Ping in Geeklog 1.4
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garfy

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Registered: 01/02/05
Posts: 437
Location:EU
Quote by: Sunny

@grafy: Can we have such a Ping service in Geeklog by some plugin>? or manually? Such pings work for google?

@Don: Here is the hack, in the second part of the article (while composing a new story) after you are done with all the editing and content press "Source" - and add the meta code <head><META name="description" content="--"> <meta name="keywords" content="---"> </head>. And save the article without clicking source again. (Because whenever the FCKEditor comes to rich text mode the meta vanishes. everytime your edit the article you need to take care and put the meta back in)



wow, is this actuall y working? and nobody figured it out before????
Is the code insterted in head
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Sunny

Anonymous
Thx Dirk, I will go through that article and see what get. Also will try and get the Ping that WP uses. To compate

@Grafy: Yes it works, but the same is not inserted in HEAD. But google still picks it up. Dont know how effective it is. I will check tonight if Yahoo and MSN is also picking it up.
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winnerdk

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Registered: 04/24/05
Posts: 339
Location:Panama City, Republic of Panama
Yes it works, but the same is not inserted in HEAD. But google still picks it up. Dont know how effective it is. I will check tonight if Yahoo and MSN is also picking it


As a news site, I get picked up almost immediately. Yesterday morning I published three articles about a Panamanian lawyer named "Manuel Antonio Caballero Pérez" who was shot in the head and killed in a drive-by assault. I published those three articles between 9:47 - 10:36 am. And after publishing the second article at 10:14 am I did a quick Google search on the guy's name to see what else was out there, and was surprised to see that Google had already picked up the first article in less than 30 minutes. Try doing a Google search on "Manuel Antonio Caballero Pérez". This article comes up in the first spot, primarily because it contains the entire name of the victim, "Manuel Antonio Caballero Pérez"

A search on "Manuel Pérez Caballero" returns the second article published yesterday, but it comes up in the fifth spot because it only contains a partial name of the victim.

The third article, which only contains a shortened version of the name "Manuel Caballero" does not appear at all in the first five pages of Google because there are just too many other pages out there with that string.

But if I do another search with specific words that I know are contained in the article, "Manuel Caballero" and "Metropolitan Social Security" then the same article comes up in the #1 spot in Google.

So, I'm getting indexed very well, but the search results will depend on the content in the articles as well as the search string used by the Google searcher.

One more thing - I tried to put in URL links to the searches, but the post got rejected as SPAM. Is there any way you can remove the restrictions on my posts? I won't spam the forums, I promise. I wanted to put in links to the example results to illustrate the point. Dude, your spam filters are jamming my style... (grin)

Don Winner
http://www.panama-guide.com
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