vBSEO 3.0 Release Candidate 8 Now Available!

Hello All!

RC8 is finally here - A bunch of performance enhancements have been implemented, as well as all reported bugs have been corrected.

Additionally, we’ve changed the URL rewrite settings approach slightly by including popular predefined URL settings within the ‘URL Rewrite Settings’ section. This approach was introduced in vBSEO RC7, however it had to be refined while the Pre-Release team tested it to make it compliant with future planned vBSEO enhancements, hence, general users didn’t get to test RC7. And that’s a good thing because Pre-Release team members had to make some adjustments (file deletions) as a result of these refinements. Thank-you Pre-Release team for your invaluable help!!

No new core features have been introduced at this point except for a nifty little change that will further help build link consensus for threads: after a forum search is done, vBSEO now removes the highlighting parameter from the landing URL and cookies the user to maintain the default vB highlight functionality. So, when a user shares a URL that is a result of a forum search, the associated Linkback (http://www.vbseo.com/misc.php?do=linkbacks) will point to the core thread as opposed to the “alternate” (?highlight=keyword) version of the URL. As with dynamic URLs, there’s no way a SE can assign link weight (higher relevancy) to the core version of the page, being the “?hightlight=keyword” version the linked URL (I hope it makes sense :cool:)

This concept has been taken one step further by 301 redirecting all previous URLs with the ‘highlight’ parameter attached, to the core thread. Idea is to effectively stop “alternate” URLs from being spread by “linknauts” when sharing links back to important resources within your site. It’s kind of OCD’ish I know, but highly effective - Try it!….. Do a search for X term in your boards, and notice how the landing URL for individual threads will be clear from the ‘highlight’ parameter while the search term is still highlighted. Also, try following any regular thread_url?highlight=abc link (or enter it directly in your browser) and see how you are 301 redirected to the core thread while highlighting ‘abc’ is still present on the landing page… sweet!

*Note:* The following option must be enabled (’1′ as oposed to ‘0′) via config_vbseo.php in order to turn on this beta option:

—Quote—
define(’VBSEO_SEARCH_REDIRECT’, *1*);
—End Quote—
On another note, and most importantly, *we recently corrected a vulnerability that enables a user to edit cookies changing their userid to post as anyone.* The issue is related to a PHP bug:
PHP Bugs: #20993: Element value changes without asking (http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=20993&edit=2), an old documented bug NOT fixed in PHP due to possible performance implications.

Thanks to Scott MacVicar (Development Team, vBulletin) for his support while reporting the issue to Crawlability.
*If you are running vB 3.5.x(+) and vBSEO, you must install vBSEO 3.0.0 RC8 to correct this issue.*

*Download*
vBSEO v.3.0.0 Release Candidate 8 is now available from the download area. All vBSEO Owners may download it now here:
http://www.vbseo.com/downloads/