FreshSubject

Search Engine Optimization Guide For Clipshare cont

Chris — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:13:09 +0000

This post continues on from my previous one here. I broke it down so that it would not be so overwhelming for new comers to Clipshare to understand, please if you haven’t read the first part and want to know how to improve the SEO on your clipshare based video site please read part1 before continuing with this post.

It’s time to setup your channel detail pages

Step5 – the channel detail pages explained

In the clipshare siteadmin we can add a description for our channel, this is a great opportunity to add a lengthy, keyword rich relevant description that will provide both readers and search engines a guide to the videos which will be in this category (channel). So to do this we first need to create a channel specific header tpl file. In this case we will call it head_cat.tpl to first copy the head_seo.tpl file and rename to head_cat.tpl

Once copied, change;

{$meta_title}

To:

{$answers[0].name} Videos | sitename

So what this means is that each channel will have a different title, description and keywords.

For example if i had a Manchester United channel the above would translate to;

Title – Manchester United Videos | My Site name
Description – Watch all the latest manchester united football videos here with videos featuring micheal owen, alan shearer and blah blah blah blah….
Keywords – Manchester United videos, free manchester united videos, watch manchester united videos

next we need to edit the channels_detail.php page to call the new head_cat.tpl instead of it’s original head1.tpl. To do this open up channels_detail.php and change;

STemplate::display('head1.tpl');

To:

STemplate::display('head_cat.tpl');

Then upload.

So how are these generated? Well when you create a channel in the clipshare siteadmin, you are requested to enter a name for the chanel (title) and a channel description, the above code then uses that title and description to create unique page titles, description and keywords.

Adding unique content to your channels detail page

Step6 – Going that step further and adding unique content to your page

Before we’ve talked about adding unique page titles and descriptions, step6 takes your channel description and adds it straight onto the page creating some unique content for both the user and search engines. This step is optional and the following example will only work for theme’s in the Freshpack series – Allowed and Forbidden. If there is demand i’ll add the code to achieve the same result in the default themes from clipshare.

Open up channel_detail.tpl file in your editor and add;


{$answers[0].name} Videos

{$answers[0].descrip}

What this does is add unique content to the channel_detail page itself via the descrip call which is the channel’s description, we also surround the channel name with h1 tags as it is the pages title.

If you would like some examples and css stylings for step6 let me know.

Lets index the tag pages with unique titles and descriptions

Step7 – How to index your tag pages correctly

In step7, which is optional – we will discuss how to create our tag pages with unique titles and descriptions. If you’ve decided not to index your tag pages then please do not do this step.

Create a new head_search.tpl from copying your head_seo.tpl file and change;

{$meta_title}

To:

{$smarty.request.search_id|escape:'html'} Videos

Remember the above it just an example, the

{$smarty.request.search_id|escape:'html'}

will display your specific tag, so for instance if your tag was funny then the title of the page would end up being – “funny videos”

Next we edit the search_results.php and change;

STemplate::display('head1.tpl');

To:

STemplate::display('head_search.tpl');

Save and upload.

Create a robots.txt file to stop indexing of your chosen pages

Step8 – A robots.txt file can stop indexing of many inner pages

Create a robots.txt file and upload it into your main directory with the following code:

Disallow:
User-agent: *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /siteadmin/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /include/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /ajax/
Disallow: /classes/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /users/
Disallow: /related/
# disallow all files ending with these extensions
Disallow: /add_favour.php
Disallow: /add_video.php
Disallow: /captcha.php
Disallow: /compose.php
Disallow: /compose.php*
Disallow: /confirm_email.php
Disallow: /convert.php
Disallow: /create_group.php
Disallow: /feed_embed.php
Disallow: /ffavour.php
Disallow: /ffavour.php*
Disallow: /friend_accept.php
Disallow: /friends.php
Disallow: /friends.php*
Disallow: /fullscreen.php
Disallow: /fvideos.php
Disallow: /fvideos.php*
Disallow: /inbox.php
Disallow: /inbox.php*
Disallow: /index.php
Disallow: /invite_friends.php
Disallow: /invite_members.php
Disallow: /invite_signup.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /logout.php
Disallow: /members.php
Disallow: /members.php*
Disallow: /more_tags.php
Disallow: /msg.php
Disallow: /my_favour.php
Disallow: /my_favour.php*
Disallow: /my_playlist.php
Disallow: /my_playlist.php*
Disallow: /my_profile.php
Disallow: /my_vdo_edit.php
Disallow: /my_video.php
Disallow: /my_video.php*
Disallow: /mymail.php
Disallow: /nvplayer.swf*
Disallow: /outbox.php
Disallow: /outbox.php*
Disallow: /pack_ops.php
Disallow: /payment_ops.php
Disallow: /payment.php
Disallow: /pmt_success.php
Disallow: /recent.php
Disallow: /recoverpass.php
Disallow: /renew_account.php
Disallow: /share_video.php
Disallow: /signup.php
Disallow: /signup.php*
Disallow: /terms.php
Disallow: /test.php
Disallow: /ufavour.php
Disallow: /ufavour.php*
Disallow: /ufriends.php
Disallow: /uplaylist.php
Disallow: /uplaylist.php*
Disallow: /upload_success.php
Disallow: /upload.php
Disallow: /uprofile.php
Disallow: /uvideos.php
Disallow: /video.php
Disallow: /view_video.php
Disallow: /view_video.php*
# disallow all files with ? in url
Disallow:

The addition of the robots.txt essentially stops search engines from indexing two of the same pages, for instance view_video.php?viewkey=98909890 and /video/90/steven-gerards-goal/ are technically the same page, but we want the latter to be indexed and not the non-seo friendly edition.

Final tips and information

Make sure SEO url’s are turned on in the siteadmin

This guide is not an ideal fix as it creates new header files which may increase page loading times slightly, but it is a solution for the time being that anyone can apply

If you enjoyed this post why not comment below.

Search Engine Optimization Guide For Clipshare

Chris — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:02:48 +0000

Out of the box, Clipshare’s inbuilt seo leaves alot to be desired – this guide is an attempt to overcome the main issues of search engine optimization within the clipshare script. Clipshare essentially has one page that is optimized for search engines, that is the View Video page. Every other page on the website shares the exact same page title, page description and page keywords – read below to find out how to create unique titles, descriptions and keywords for the pages of your choice.

You can apply this guide to your websites in around 10minutes, it should help you gain more organic traffic without diluting your pages down. The SEO guide for Clipshare was originally written based on using the Forbidden theme from Freshsubject, there may be some differences with the default themes – if you have any issues just post a comment below and i’ll offer my advice.

UPDATE: the search engine optimization guide for clipshare turned out to be alot longer than i had originally planned, so i’ve split it up into two parts – you can read part2 here.

The Forbidden or Allowed themes are a great way to give a much needed boost to your Clipshare website, featuring valid xhtml and css code with correctly structured code for SEO, you can view the themes here.

Editing head1.tpl for SEO

Step1 – Involves editing the template file head1.tpl located in the templates folder.

Change:

To:

What this code change does is tell the search engines not to index your website, you may not understand why this is important but i will explain it. In the Clipshare script, like many other video scripts there is a distinct lack of original content as the same videos show up on hundreads of pages from user playlists to their uploaded videos. Once we tell the search engines not to index the site we can select pages inwhich we do want indexed, pages that will show up in the search engines – For instance we want the view_video page to show up first for a particular video and not the Friends video page.

Make a list of the pages we do want indexed

Step2 – Involves choosing the correct pages to be indexed

So now we have to make a descision on the best pages (template files) to index on our site, these pages will feature heavily in the search engines. The pages to be indexed are;

Index Page – Frontpage of your video site
Channel Detail Page – Each channel on our website will be indexed
Channels Page – Indexed as link between our index and channel detail page
View Video Page – The video page, each video uploaded has a unique page
Individual Tags Page – Each tag has a seperate page created (optional)

So the above is a list of the pages we will be indexing, please note that there are not 5 pages above but 5 section of possible pages above. What i mean is that if your website has 100 videos uploaded to it, each with their own title, description and tags and each video has 2 different tags then we already have a possible further 300 pages to be indexed (100 unique video pages and 200 tag pages – 2×100). We are ofcourse not counting the channel detail pages inwhich you can also have any number of channels.

The choice between Channels and Videos
I made the descision on how i wanted my site to be indexed, whether I wanted the video page to be my main link between the View Video page or my Channel Detail page. I picked the Channel Detail page because it has the ability to display unique content whereas the video page is simply a list of latest video’s added. If you would like to index the video’s page also then you can add it to the list above.

So your site structure will be as follows:

Index -> channels -> channel_detail -> view_video

an example of a site using this structure would be;

Footballvideo site -> list of football teams -> liverpool football videos -> steven gerrards goal against chelsea permier league game video

The above example should give you a clear image of what we are trying to achieve in this guide. If your not sure on step2 then please write in the comments below.

Create a new header tpl file

Step3 – Creation of a new header file that will allow the discussed pages to be indexed

Create a copy of the head1.tpl file you edited in step1 and rename this file head_seo.tpl, once this has been done open up your head_seo.tpl file and change;

To:

This is the new header file that will also allow us to add unique content to the pages discussed above in the form of Title, Description and Keywords.

I will also explain some specific template mods on how to display a unique description on your Channel Detail page using your channel description text inwhich you entered in the siteadmin.

A View Video page edit is not required because it already contains unique content such as the Title and Description of the video.

Additional changes now need to be made in head_seo.tpl that will allow you to enter unqiue titles and descriptions, so change;

{$site_name}

To:

{$meta_title}

This is the end of editing the head_seo.tpl file so save and upload to your templates directory.

Setting up our unique page titles and descriptions

Step4 – Editing our .php files to include our unique titles and descriptions

Before we get stuck into this i will show you what files are associated with which page, although it is pretty self-explanatory it can be a tad confusing for someone who’s new to Clipshare.

channels.tpl -> channels.php
Index.tpl -> index.php

In this step we will be creating our unique titles and descriptions for the channels page and the index page, the channel_detail page is a little more complicated and requires a new header file to be created so that will be explained in step5.

Open channels.php and change;

STemplate::display('head1.tpl');

To:

STemplate::display('head_seo.tpl');

Now you need to add your title, description and keywords and you do this by adding;

STemplate::assign('meta_title','Your channels title here | Your site name');
STemplate::assign('meta_description','Description of this page');
STemplate::assign('meta_keywords','tags, tags2, tags3');

Below the part you just changed in the channels.php file. If your unsure of what to add, i’ve written an example of a channels page for a ficticious football website called FootballTube

STemplate::assign('meta_title','Football Teams Videos | FootballTube');
STemplate::assign('meta_description','Selection of football league and trick videos from both englands professional and amateur teams such as manchester united, liverpool and chelsea');
STemplate::assign('meta_keywords','football team videos, football team traning videos, englands football videos, videos of professional football teams, professional football vids,');

So to add a unique title and descrption to your index page, you do exactly the same thing as above but change the information you add in, such as meta_title. This step can be used on any page you want to create a unique title for such as videos or community pages and does not need to be restricted to just your channels / index pages.

RECAP

So far we’ve decided on a site structure to follow and have created unique title, description and keyword tags for both the index page and the channels page. You can use the exact same instructions layed out in step4 to create unique title, description and keywords tags for additional pages such as the community page and/or the videos page.

Click to read part2 of the Clipshare Search Engine Optimization Guide

Freshsubject launches new website and design

Chris — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:57:26 +0000

Today freshsubject has launched a brand new website and design that will pave the way for how we do business in the future. We have alot of exciting developments in terms of both current and future themes in addition to providing a more complete support package to clients in the form of written tutorials and screencasts.

So what’s changed here at Freshsubject?

FreshSubject Blog – An important part of any website a blog is where discussions can happen and updates issued, the freshsubject’s blog has been in development for sometime but we are happy to open up to the public.

Support Documentation – We know Clipshare themes and templates can be a tricky subject for some so we’ve decided to put together a more complete resource that will hopefully aid people in making changes to the themes themselves without much previous knowledge.

New theme’s page – the previous website was lacking in the presentation of the themes, our new layout allows us to present them in a more professional manner and now you can easily view and demo the current themes.

Whats next for FreshSubject

Our key focus has always been on the envient brand scripts – Clip-share and the newly released AVS script, we also hope to expand into MediaShareSuite and while we will focus on the envient scripts for the time being if there is a demand we will of course work to fulfill those needs. You can expect some new theme concepts to get published shortly, especially for AVS as we are extremely excited to be working with this script.

For more information aboutt he people behind Freshsubject – visit the about page.