Search Engine Friendly vBulletin Suddenly Affordable
vBulletin has always been the standard for forum software for anyone looking to launch a community around their blog or website. The features built into vBulletin far outweigh any negatives that come along with the product.
However with every piece of software, there are problems. For vBulletin, the two major shortcomings are 1) Very few design options(table-based) and 2) poor URL structure. vBulletin is addressing both with the upcoming release of vBulletin 4.0 (I believe it is slated for Q2 ‘09 release).
The goal of the vBulletin 4 series is to develop a modern, scalable application platform that will allow your communities to thrive.
Key features and improvements that will be included in the first vBulletin 4 release are:
- Cross-content search system providing a single interface to search across forum posts, blog entries and comments and other supported products
- Improved search performance
- A fresh design and layout making use of semantic markup and CSS styling
- An enhanced style and template system to enhance your ability to change the layout
- Controls to assist with the placement of advertising elements
- SEO features, including friendly URLs
- A centralized attachment system, allowing the sharing of attachments across products
In short, this spells doom (that’s D-O-O-M) for vBSEO, a product that built its business around the laziness of the vBulletin team by offering a plugin which converts vB’s default URL structure into search engine friendly URLs.
The good news is that now Joe Consumer doesn’t have to cough up an extra $250 just for a simple URL rewrite function that should have been included in the software for the past 5 years (at least).
I’m sure vBSEO will find a way to charge their customers for something. Some sort of unique value add that makes their website SUPER rankable - or some garbage like that. I personally have always thought vBSEO was a ripoff. Although I think search engine friendly URLs are a plus, they’re not the primary ranking factor.
But it doesn’t matter anyway. Search engine friendly URLs are coming in vBulletin 4.0.
