SEO for Page Titles in phpBB3

One irritating thing about a phpBB3 forum is the way that the titles appear in a search engine. Valuable space is given to “View topic” or “View forum”, when it could be giving people real information. A more descriptive page title is a great way to help people find your website! Rearranging the page titles is actually much easier than you might think. The mod is quick, easy, and only requires that you make changes to 4 files. I’ll walk you through it.

SEO for Page Titles in phpBB3

Files to Edit:

• styles/(yourstyle)/template/overall_header.html
• viewforum.php
• viewtopic.php
• language/en/common.php

Edits:

Before you edit the files, create a BACKUP copy!

1. Open the file ‘styles/(your theme)/template/overall_header.html’

At around line 15, you will see the following line:

<title>{SITENAME} &bull; <!– IF S_IN_MCP –>{L_MCP} &bull; <!– ELSEIF S_IN_UCP –>{L_UCP} &bull; <!– ENDIF –>{PAGE_TITLE}</title>

Replace this with the following line:

<title>{PAGE_TITLE} &bull; <!– IF S_IN_MCP –>{L_MCP} &bull; <!– ELSEIF S_IN_UCP –>{L_UCP} &bull; <!– ENDIF –>{SITENAME}</title>

You’re basically just swapping {SITENAME} and {PAGE_TITLE}. This makes the name of the topic or category appear before your website name in the page title.

2. Open the file ‘viewforum.php’ in the root of your forum

At around line 137, you will see the following line:

page_header($user->lang['VIEW_FORUM'] . ‘ – ‘ . $forum_data['forum_name']);

Replace this with the following line:

page_header($forum_data['forum_name']);

This will remove the words “View forum” from the page title when a user navigates to a forum.

3. Open the file ‘viewtopic.php’ in the root of your forum

At around line 1590, you will see the following line:

page_header($user->lang['VIEW_TOPIC'] .’ – ‘ . $topic_data['topic_title']);

Replace this with the following line:

page_header($topic_data['topic_title']);

This will remove the words “View topic” from the page title when a user views a topic.

4. Open the file ‘/language/en/common.php’

At around line 274, you will see the following line:

‘INDEX’ => ‘Index page’,

Replace this with the following line:

‘INDEX’ => ‘Your New Title’,

Replace “Your New Title” with anything you’d like. Use whatever is appropriate for your forum. I use “Forum Index” on my sites. That lets users easily see where they are, and it’s short enough not to be annoying. At least it’s more descriptive than “Index page”.

Additional Note:

Another big step to make this all work for you is to change the name of your forum that will appear in the title. This can be done in the admin panel. Choose Board Settings from the Board Configuration menu on the left.

Under the Board Settings, change the Site Name to be whatever you would like to appear on all page titles.

I hope this works for everyone. Let me know if I’ve stated anything incorrectly!

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1. Anti Bot Question Mod for phpBB3
2. Single Login for PhpBB3 & Coppermine
3. Change Shopp Receipt Titles
4. Changing Shopp Page Titles

Tagged as: forum, mod, phpBB3, SEO