Duplicate content?

[big123]

Love the script, Thanks!

I just noticed that the news script uses the code ? in the html (which is html code for a ?) in the url of the news link instead of the ? itself.

Would this be considered duplicate content to the search engines because of this?

URL of regular link to the thread of the forum to read more.

xxx.com/forum/xxx?

URL in the html code for the link

xxx.com/forum/xxx?


Thanks

[Patrick]

All major search engines should recognize the HTML properly and not result in duplicate entries. If they do not, then the search engine itself is buggy (afterall, if it doesn't recognize that character, then it doesn't recognize valid HTML).

As far as I am aware, the search engine should properly interpret such characters for what they are (since it is valid html), and therefore not create duplicate entries.

I have already confirmed this with google's search results... but you could always contact them and ask.

[big123]

Thanks for the clarification Patiek!

Thats what I thought but wasn't sure.

Thanks again and have a nice night...

[big123]

Hey Patiek,

It's been bugging me that the ? is coming up as ? in the url. Is there anyway to get it to show just a ?.

Thanks alot.

[Patrick]

You could represent an entire webpage by their ascii values if you wanted, it really doesn't matter.

However, you can change it by modifying the forum class which is located in forum-news/classes/sources/Forum/ . The name will vary depending on which forum you are using (as well as based on forum version). Simply edit the class that has the same name / version for your forum (or similar) and change the first two links in the first function.

They will look something like this (of course it varies depending on which forum class you are editing):
$this->LINKS['author'] = $this->CONF['url'] . "member.php?action=profile&uid=";

$this->LINKS['thread'] = $this->CONF['url'] . "showthread.php?tid=";

Simple replace the ? with ? . You can also replace the & with & if you want.

[big123]

Thanks Patiek :) I appreciate everything you do