I have been using a Phpfox installation to create a niche community. Mind you, this is not a full fledged review, just some notes.
Well, in summary, Phpfox sucks for SEO.
- There are no url rewrites, and messing around with the code is bound to break something.
- The sitemap generated is great for text only sitemaps, but you cannot generate an xml one. (EDIT: now you can, see how to make xml sitemaps for phpfox)
- The internal urls forbid you from linking to any single file in the domain, practically the rewrites hijack anything to a useless page not found.
- The rss feeds it generates are not validated in any standard. They do work with rss readers though, but you simply cannot burn them.
Of course, I did not expect the script to be a breeze like wordpress, but some seo options would be nice. The pages do seem to get indexed though, they are just not seo optimized.
To its defense, Phpfox is a beauty to work with.
The installation is simple and fast. As soon as you are done, you have a mini Myspace in your hands. The default options are enough to run the majority of social sites, complete with a forum, PM, announcements, chat, polls, blog pages, member search and both video and image galleries.
Every hardcore webbuilder like me will want to hack it to death, but for a newbie, its amazing. The adminpanel gives you somewhat easy and almost complete control over everything, with no technical skills required.
There are some way better options, but if you want a “right off the box” social site, Phpfox is your friend. And get ready to dish out 500$-1000$ for modding it.
Popularity: 28% [?]
written by Glowleaf
\\ tags: online communities, phpfox, social site
October 12th, 2008 at 6:21 am
After adding the site to Google Webmaster Tools, I have even more points to add about Phpfox’s SEO issues.
First of all, the error check in GWT shows a mess, duplicate meta descriptions 113 and the same amount of short ones.
Missing title tags 7, duplicate title tags 66.
Now, we all know that meta tags are quite useless, but meta descriptions are good for catching the attention of searchers.
Most importantly, the sitemap as mentioned above is text only, not submittable to Google. I tried generating an xml sitemap with Gsite Crawler and upload it, but the catchall settings return a “page not found”, forbidding access to the sitemap file.
A small hint, to validate your phpfox site with GWT, the file verification does not work. You need to use the meta tag method, and add the meta tag to the header file, in: /httpdocs/design/templates/default/public
Edit the file _header.html, and paste the meta line right under
meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow”
It should look like this, I left the tag slashes out:
meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow”
meta name=”verify-v1″ content=”sCMFj2k7ruTEqiyIVQjoXK/mhUulI93JK/rYNoUpeEU=”
meta http-equiv=”imagetoolbar” content=”no”
October 12th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Have you had any experience with the community builder from Joomla? I have a community with Ning but have experienced some of the same SEO problems. I am also at mercy to Ning’s updating and hosting. From what I can tell Joomla has a lot of extensions that can be added that will make the community SEO friendly as well as the community builder that makes it more like a traditional social network. I have also been looking at Buddypress as it is almost finished. Although, it seems to be better for building a blogging community more than a social network.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Its funny that you mention it, my first (failed) attempt at a community was a year ago, and the script of choice was Joomla with the Community Builder extensions.
Joomla, by default is crappy in SEO, but you can do the standard mods to it to fix all of them. Paired with community builder, you can have a custom and optimized community on your hands. But it needs a lot of work, and for the project I mention here, I did not want that much work. I needed a plug and play script, that is why I chose phpfox.
The CB’s support community is incredible as well, full of mods, plugins, tweaks and advice. It is located at http://www.joomlapolis.com, be sure to register if you work with CB.
Ning I think is a hosted community option? I noted it down to try it, but I cannot really comment on it.
Seriously, phpfox rocks. It works fine, it’s just not optimized. But everything works great, and it would take you thousands of dollars to have all its features coded. It is a bargain for its price/benefit ratio. It only lacks if you need custom stuff, out of the normal community toys.
Actually, communities are a very big issue, and in my search I found a complete lack of information on building them. That is why I made this post, and since it interests a lot of people, I will keep them coming as I learn more from experience.
October 14th, 2008 at 4:35 am
Your right about Ning, it is hosted on their servers but there really aren’t a lot of options for customization. Also if you want to host your own ads, add your own domain, etc etc. It will cost you like $30 a month. I don’t care about the $30 but that added with the non seo aspect and lack of customization makes me want to go with a self hosted platform. The only thing I don’t like about the php Fox script is that its too much of a myspace type social network. My community is more of a citizen journalism site that relies more on blogs, forums, and pictures than anything else. I also don’t mind taking the time to customize as I already have a solid user base and feel it will be worth the time and will be nice to be able to customize and fully control the community. Although, if your looking for a social network site like mypace it looks like php fox is the way to go. I also have been looking at Elgg, they seem to fit my needs. Have you had any experience with that platform?
October 14th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Working with Ning is the same as creating your blog on typepad. It saves time, but you are not really doing this job. Its sloppy, and unprofessional. Plus you surrender a huge amount of control over the site, and webmasters are control freaks. That is why we name ourselves “Administrators”
I wanted to use elgg, instead of phpfox, but my server specs do not let me…
Requirements
Elgg 1.0 requires a system running PHP 5.2+ as an Apache mod (not in CGI mode or safe mode) with GD extensions, MySQL 5+ and a version of the Apache web server with mod_rewrite installed. OpenSocial requires Mcrypt; Elgg 1.1 SOAP extensions will require the PHP SOAP library
Not many servers run php 5.2, and unless you have a full managed server, it runs in CGI mode.
So I was shot down right from the start…
Elgg really does look sleek, very web 2.0, and especially the new version has cool features. It also focuses more on content generation, like your citizen journalism community.
Now I just need to find a server to run it on…
October 14th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Another small bit of phpfox help:
Phpfox generates a SHITLOAD of pageviews. No, not just a lot, like a forum. A TON of them. Monetize it with adbrite, that offers cpm ads.
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:38 am
[...] have gotten a lot of experience lately using PhpFox, so I will continue my earlier post on PhpFox SEO, and do a full [...]
November 13th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
I m building a new community site and planning to use Phpfox. Can anyone tell me if the IIS mod_rewrite by Micronovae is helpful. I checked many PHPFox powered websites and many of the urls are not so SEO friendly. I am not a user of IIS mod_rewrite but it seems it is fully compatible with Apache mod_rewrite, so may be I can use same config file for IIS. Can anyone enlight me more on this plz?
Regards
January 20th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I just paid $50 for an seo plugin for phpfox and it does the job. Plus instead of the one time fee of $299, I pay monthly. So my overall monthly expense is just $40 a month. I have it on a server that I already have up for another website. Once it makes more money, I will customize it more. It works well for me.
February 1st, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Quick heads up to anyone wanting to add a sitemap to phpfox:
The instructions here were useful:
http://forums.phpfox.com/showthread.php?t=18688
Thanks for the adbrite tip above.
Cheers
April 18th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
hi,
great to read this post, am using phpfox and it works wonder ……………
April 21st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
hi
how do i add sitemap for phpfox i tried using free online ones all i get is one url.
Graffiti Letters can you please copy paste the instructions here……..
August 4th, 2009 at 10:57 am
You should check out Sikosoft instead.