Forum for discussing general topics related to Couch.
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Hello, I would have a question, hop anyone can help...

I have redone and adapted my website to couch, meaning all html pages are now turned to php pages....since I have done that, I have almost no visitors on my site, and before I had daily at least 20 unique visitors...

I suspect it has to do with php files...I have not turned on the pretty URL´s...
My questions are:
if I turn the pretty URL, is it then only the title of the page that is search machine friendly?
What about keywords in the text of the blog?
And what about content of other pages, that are not cloned pages, but are turned to php pages because some part of them is editable region?

As I have google analytics, I see that my HTML pages were not so difficult to be found through search machines and keywords....

How do you deal with this? Is there a solution? It would be sad if I have to turn all again to HTML because I like many things about couch......

thanks in advance

Tanja
Enabling prettyURLs will not in any way effect the ability of your page to be parsed by a search engine.
Let's say we have a non-clonable template. prettyURLs simply makes the url look a bit nicer:
Code: Select all
Normal:
http://www.website.com/about.php

prettyURLs:
http://www.website.com/about/
For clonable templates:
Code: Select all
Normal:
http://www.website.com/news.php?p=3

prettyURLs:
http://www.website.com/news/home-sales-surge.html

This also looks nicer and in addition, is more descriptive to the average visitor. If someone were to search for 'home sales surge', your page with prettyURLs enabled might rank higher in search results.

I'm not entirely sure about the visitor decline issue. However, in light of the fact that you transitioned from html to php pages it would be wise to implement permanent redirects. This would help search engines understand that the html pages have simply been moved to a different location. It would also help users that have bookmarked your old html url's, so they would not receive 404 errors. You can enable permanent redirects after you have used gen_htaccess.php. Search for the 'DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS' text and add the redirects below it:
Code: Select all
#DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS
RewriteRule ^index.php$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^index.html$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^about.html$ "about/" [R=301,L,QSA]
Hi Tanja,

There are two different concepts -
1. Your site's pages getting indexed by Google and
2. Your site's pages getting listed ahead of other sites when someone searches for terms that are associated with whatever topic your site caters to.

As for the pages being getting indexed by Google, trust me, we regularly see pages of sites built in Couch getting indexed literally within hours of the sites getting launched or with new content being added.
Try this - type the following in Google's search box
Code: Select all
site:http://www.yoursite.com/

replacing 'yoursite' with the actual name of your site.
I am not reproducing your site's name here but I tried this and got 84 results. Every single page of your site seems to have been indexed by Google.

Next comes the second point - getting listed ahead of other sites:
This is what SEO is all about and Couch has been built with SEO up most in mind -
turn on prettyURLs and (as cheesypoof explained above) there is no visible indication that these are PHP pages. It is not that .php pages do not rank high in searches - it is just that you can now fit keywords in the URL and this will help in your SEO.

SEO also requires other measures - using a suitable title, meta tags, headings etc.
Couch gives you absolute control over all these features. You can hand code them anyway you want.

In short, Couch does not hamper your SEO efforts in any way but you'll have to (as with every other CMS) plan and execute the SEO measures yourself.

For all practical purposes any page outputted by Couch is every bit as good as a static HTML page.
So let us put aside the notion that converting your pages from HTML to PHP have in some way resulted in Google not being able to parse the pages properly and consequently in the decline of the number of visitors.

Yet, since as you say that the number has indeed declined, the only reason that seems plausible (as explained by cheesypoof) is that the URL of your previous pages had garnered a particular PR value as far as Google is concerned. This used to make Google show them higher up in searches.
The change of URLs has resulted in the PR getting lost. The old pages have disappeared from Google's index and it will take some time for the new ones to gain the lost value.

You should have ideally mapped the new URLs of the pages to the older ones by using 301 redirects as shown in the earlier reply. This would have resulted in Google simply replacing the new pages for the older ones.

Hope this answers your questions.
Thank you very much cheesypoof and KK!!!

Could you please help me with .htacess and gen_acessfiles? I would like to be sure that I do the right thing as I am ignorant in any other code except HTML ....

First, my server provider wrote to me, that in order to activate mod_rewrite function, in order to activate Pretty URLs i have to add this line

RewriteEngine On

in the .htaccess file that is delivered by Couch....

When I open .htaccess in text Editor I see there written

Options All -Indexes

Should I just add the line below this line? Thats all?

My second question is regarding gen_gen_htaccess.php I cannot find the line 'DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS'. Here is what I see when I open the file:

Code: Select all
<?php //003ab
if(!extension_loaded('ionCube Loader')){$__oc=strtolower(substr(php_uname(),0,3));$__ln='ioncube_loader_'.$__oc.'_'.substr(phpversion(),0,3).(($__oc=='win')?'.dll':'.so');@dl($__ln);if(function_exists('_il_exec')){return _il_exec();}$__ln='/ioncube/'.$__ln;$__oid=$__id=realpath(ini_get('extension_dir'));$__here=dirname(__FILE__);if(strlen($__id)>1&&$__id[1]==':'){$__id=str_replace('\\','/',substr($__id,2));$__here=str_replace('\\','/',substr($__here,2));}$__rd=str_repeat('/..',substr_count($__id,'/')).$__here.'/';$__i=strlen($__rd);while($__i--){if($__rd[$__i]=='/'){$__lp=substr($__rd,0,$__i).$__ln;if(file_exists($__oid.$__lp)){$__ln=$__lp;break;}}}@dl($__ln);}else{die('The file '.__FILE__." is corrupted.\n");}if(function_exists('_il_exec')){return _il_exec();}echo('Site error: the file <b>'.__FILE__.'</b> requires the ionCube PHP Loader '.basename($__ln).' to be installed by the site administrator.');exit(199);
?>
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_______________

And, when I once understand where to write the code that cheesypoof has shared, do I have to do this rewrite rule for each single page? So that each previous HTML page is listed with a new name?

Like

#DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS
RewriteRule ^index.php$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^index.html$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^about.php$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^about.html$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^contact.html$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^contact.php$ "" [R=301,L,QSA]



And, If you could please explain what is this red part of the line for?
RewriteRule ^about.html$ "about/" [R=301,L,QSA]

Thanks in advance

Tanja
Hi tanja.
1. Log in to couch.
2. Visit the gen_htaccess.php page with your browser. (http://www.website.com/couch/gen_htaccess.php)
3. Copy all of the text generated by this page and save it to your .htaccess file.
At this stage if you have prettyURLs enabled, it should be functioning.

The next steps are entirely optional and are only advisable because you had been previously using html pages.
1. Search for "#DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS" in your .htaccess file. You should see RewriteRule ^index.php$ "" [R=301,L,QSA] right below this.
2. We can now add the permanent redirects below this line. Lets say you previously had a page 'about.html'. You now have this page located within 'about.php'. It would be a good idea to redirect people who visit http://www.website.com/about.html to http://www.website.com/about/ instead.
To do this we would use the following method:
Code: Select all
RewriteRule ^about.html$ "about/" [R=301,L,QSA]
The second half of this line "about/" is the destination that people will be redirected to. We could alternatively write "http://www.website.com/about/" instead if that makes it easier for you to understand. Nevertheless, it is not necessary to do the same for ^about.php$ because couch already handles this situation.
Example:
Code: Select all
#DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS
RewriteRule ^index.php$ "http://www.website.com/" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^index.html$ "http://www.website.com/" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^about.html$ "http://www.website.com/about/" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^contact.html$ "http://www.website.com/contact/" [R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^gallery.html$ "http://www.website.com/gallery/" [R=301,L,QSA]
I really love the help that you both offer on this forum. Keep up the good work. :)
Hi cheesypoof!!

Thanks a lot! I did everything as you have written, and redirections work great, hope search engines will understand......

Someone before me has just written what I wanted to say too:

Couch is not only great and really simple CMS bur has great support from KK and from the great community....

Thanks a lot again....

Tanja
Hello again!

I have just checked my web site in Google as KK has suggested, and I see that search engines already see new php sites, so I guess I´ll get the visitors I have had before migrating to php...

And, there is another issue about SEO, that I cannot figure out how to do...
I would like to have individual META description and keywords for each generated page i.e. blog entry......
How can I achieve that?
I see now in Google results that folders, page and list view all appear with same META desc that is given in the template page....

best regards

Tanja
Well, this not only looks like a monologue now, but it is one....

Just wanted to tell that I have found some previous posts on this forum where it is explained how to do this what I wanted - to have individual META description for each generated page....

So I added an editable region for META description and all is perfect now....


best regards

Tanja
tanja wrote: Well, this not only looks like a monologue now, but it is one....

Just wanted to tell that I have found some previous posts on this forum where it is explained how to do this what I wanted - to have individual META description for each generated page....

So I added an editable region for META description and all is perfect now....


best regards

Tanja


heres what i did tanja :

my template for blogpost page :
Code: Select all
<cms:template title='Blog' clonable='1' commentable='1'>

<cms:editable name='meta' label='Post Meta' type='group' />

<cms:editable name='post_keywords' label='Search Keywords for Post' desc='Separate by coma' type='text' group='meta' />

<cms:editable name='post_description' label='Search Description for Post' type='text' group='meta' />
   
   
</cms:template>



the meta :
Code: Select all
<meta charset="utf-8">

<title><cms:get_custom_field 'site_name' masterpage='globals.php' /> | The Blog >>
<cms:show k_page_title /></title>

<meta name="keywords" content="<cms:show post_keywords />" />

<meta name="description" content="<cms:show post_description />" />

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">



with this, i have an ability to add custom keywords & description for every post on my blog.

;)
As soon as possible!

Touch me up : abada[dot]zulma[at]gmail[dot]com
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