MyBB Google SEO tutorial on how to install on MyBB 1.6.
Tutorial updated for MyBB 1.6.5 and Google SEO 1.6.2, see MyBB Google SEO Install Guide for MyBB 1.6.5.
The MyBB Google SEO plugin is a powerful modification plugin to MyBB which rewrites the URLs to become SEO friendly for search engines and makes a MyBB SEO friendly forum, with it your MyBB forum rankings in search engines will improve very much. The MyBB Google SEO plugin however, can be difficult to install without the proper knowledge of using the htaccess file which is needed to change the URLs. I’ve created a tutorial on how to install the MyBB Google SEO plugin for MyBB 1.6, this tutorial was created using cPanel to manage files. This tutorial is also using MyBB Google SEO 1.1.13 [LEGACY] plugin and MyBB 1.6.4 forum software version, this tutorial may not work correctly if you are not using these versions together. You will need a general knowledge of MyBB and cPanel, but I will try to make this as complete and easy to understand as possible.
1. First, download the MyBB Google SEO plugin.
2. Extract the zip file.
3. Inside the extracted folder, you should see several other files. Archive zip the inc folder to make a inc.zip file.
4. Login to cPanel, click File Manager, go to the root of your MyBB installation and make sure you check the Show Hidden Files (dotfiles) box.
5. Once you’re in the root domain name of your MyBB installation in File Manager, upload the inc.zip file we zipped earlier. Extract it after it finishes uploading, you can also delete the inc.zip file now. The MyBB Google SEO plugin has now been extracted into the correct locations of MyBB (do NOT activate the plugin in your MyBB forum yet).
6. Next we need the correct functions.php file specifically for MyBB Google SEO, a different one is needed for each MyBB version that the functions.php file was changed in. for MyBB 1.6.4, get functions-googleseo-1.6.4.php here.
7. Extract the zip file and you’ll find the functions-googleseo-1.6.4.php file, in File Manager go into the /inc folder and upload this file.
8. In File Manager download the original functions.php file for a backup, then delete it. Rename functions-googleseo-1.6.4.php to functions.php.
9. Last to do now is to upload and modify the htaccess file for the MyBB Google SEO plugin. In the google_seo_1.1.13 folder extracted earlier there is a file called htaccess.txt.example, upload it to the root of your MyBB installation in File Manager.
10. Download the current htaccess.txt file in your MyBB installation and then delete it, rename htaccess.txt.example to htaccess.txt.
11. In File Manager select the Code Editor for the htaccess.txt file and edit it, as we will need to make some changes to it for MyBB Google SEO.
12. Here’s the tricky part:
The screenshot above outlines the parts of the htaccess.txt file you can edit. The ones in red NEEDS to be edited, while the ones in purple are optional. For the ones in red that circles “/MyBB/”, you must change these to your MyBB’s root installation URL. For example, if it’s at www.mywebsite.com, then change “/MyBB/” to just “/”. If it’s at www.mywebsite.com/myforum/, then change “/MyBB/” to “/myforum/”. For the red circle “yoursite/MyBB/” is similar as before. Replace it with “www.mywebsite.com/” or “www.mywebsite.com/myforum/”, wherever your root MyBB installation is. I’ll explain the purple circled areas later, but for now leave them as is. When the changes are complete, save them.
13. Rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess.
14. Time to activate the MyBB Google SEO plugin. Go into Admin CP of your MyBB forum, install and activate the Google SEO plugin.
15. It should say “404, Meta, Redirect, Sitemap and URL are disabled. (Configure)”, click the configure link.
16. Switch Google SEO 404, Google SEO Meta, Google SEO Redirect, Google SEO Sitemap and Enable Google SEO URLs to yes. Save settings.
16. Go back to the plugins page, it should now say “404, Meta, Redirect, Sitemap and URL are enabled.” with a green checkmark image. Congrats, MyBB Google SEO has been successfully installed.
MyBB Google SEO optional features
To further enhance the MyBB Google SEO plugin for search engines, there’s a few adjustments you can make.
Change the MyBB Google SEO URL scheme (advanced users only)
Remember the purple areas in the screenshot of your htaccess file earlier? We can change these to change the URL schemes of your MyBB forum. By MyBB stock default they are like www.example.com/showthread.php?tid=1, or with the MyBB Google SEO plugin www.example.com/Thread-Your-Thread-Title. The URL schemes can be changed from “Thread” to anything you want like www.example.com/Topic-Your-Thread-Title, and the same can be done for Forum, Announcement, User, Calender and Event URL schemes too.
1. Go into File Manager in cPanel again (and again make sure you check the “Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)” box), use Code Editor to edit the .htacess file again.
2. In the purple circled area “Thread”, let’s change this to “topic” instead. Save changes.
3. Go back to Admin CP in MyBB, then to Configuration > Google SEO URL. Under the Thread URL scheme option, change it from “Thread-{url}” to “topic-{url}”. Save settings.
This is how we change the URL schemes, you can change them in your htaccess file to anything you want, but keep it short, and make sure the “-{url}” is always after your newly defined URL scheme in your Google SEO URL settings.
This concludes my MyBB tutorial for installing the MyBB Google SEO plugin. If you have any questions or problems installing the MyBB Google SEO plugin to your MyBB forum, please feel free to leave a comment.
Hi XSTRIKE, quality information you have here. I’m new to mybb and your information here has helped me a lot to learn how to do most basic MUST HAVE tweaks to my forum and to the point, specially the SEO posts! wow man, thanks for those!
I have a request. I am learning now how to implement Adsense ads into mybb, and I have seen some plugins and stuff, but I would like to see how would you address this based on your experience with mybb; change code? use plugin? Based on the premise of inserting the ads in the most efficient areas. I think such post would get you more organic traffic to your site as well.
Hi Gabriel.
I never use plugins for displaying ads, I always code them into my forums in the header and/or footer templates, or into the appropriate usergroup templates like “header_welcomeblock_guest” so only guests will see the ads for example. This frees up the use of SQL queries to prevent a high server load. The only time this becomes an issue is when you want different ads to rotate, and for that, the easiest solution is to use the My Advertisements plugin.
http://mods.mybb.com/view/my-advertisements
It’s got some settings that let’s you rotate through different ads at random.
Hope that helps, and glad you like the SEO posts!
If you are looking for a plugin for adds this should help you.
http://www.mybbcentral.com/thread-1616.html
Very useful …..Thanks a lot for this tutorials.
hey i did as you said…but i am not able to browse my threads i am getting not found error
Which version of MyBB are you using? This is for MyBB 1.6.4 or earlier only.
You may have gotten the wrong plugin as the Google SEO Lagacy download URL has changed after I made the tutorial, here’s the correct one: http://mods.mybb.com/view/google-seo-legacy
Make sure the URL schemes in your Google SEO URL setting match the same schemes in the .htaccess file.
Hello,
I have the same problem of XSTRIKE. I tried 20000 times to install, reinstall, delete, modify, move,.. this plugin to make it works. Nothing! I still get “NOT FOUND” in my threads and topics.
I have 1.6.6 version.
Follow the instructions carefully in this tutorial, it’s for MyBB 1.6.5 and later: http://mybbgroup.com/mybb-google-seo-install-guide-for-mybb-1-6-5/
Make sure you edit the htaccess file correctly and apply changes to the functions.php file.
good tutorial. i’m using SEO for a year and I updated it today. m MyBB version is 1.6.4
in google SEO htaccess sample file there is a section called “# Default MyBB Rewrite Rules:” after SEO rules.
What is this?!! I think I hadn’t it before in older version of SEO sample htaccess. right?!
Today I added them in my htaccess. Nothing happend. What should be changed!?
Another question: how you add “/” at the end of your URLs? I didn’t have it. Is it useful? What will happen for my google SEO situation If I add it to the end of URLs? how can I add it?
Some one has told here to insert bacls;ashes “” in purple suctions. What does it mean?!!
http://webupon.com/search-engines/mybb-google-seo-plugin-how-to-install-guide/
It’s an older tutorial, specifically for Google SEO LEGACY: http://mods.mybb.com/view/google-seo-legacy
The default rewrite rules are there to change the default URL schemes of MyBB to the ones you specify, you don’t need to change that.
Thanks. Would you please tell me where exactly I can add trailing rule like yours?
Does it affect to my previous indexed pages?!
Found it. Thanks. Please just help me with second question. Does this change negatively affect in older indexed page or google ranking?
I’ve added the slash at the end of that Scheme in “Google SEO URL” but my forum doesn’t show post and threats anymore, A page of my forum opens and it shows a google SEO 404 error:
“404 Not Found
Other things to try:”
Found it too
a change in htaccess shoud be made:
For example:
RewriteRule ^Forum-([^./]+)$ forumdisplay.php?google_seo_forum=$1 [L,QSA,NC]
Should be changed to:
RewriteRule ^Forum-([^./]+)/$ forumdisplay.php?google_seo_forum=$1 [L,QSA,NC]
(Slash before $ sign)
Again that other tutorial is for an older version, the only things that needs to be changed is what’s circled in the .htaccess image above. You don’t need the “/” if you’re using Google SEO 1.6.0 or later for MyBB 1.6.4 and later.
Yes. It was wrong.
Forums open with the trailing slash as I wanted but Posts and Threats Icons doesn’t show. 
Which circle do you mean?!
Is the change in Google SEO URL setting correct? I changed
Forum-{url}
to: Forum-{url}/
Then what should I write in htaccess?
The new generated rules in plugins pages shows what I wrote befor. I mean a slash between “)” and “$”. But in plugins page I have this error:
Board URL is set to ‘http://forums.svus.ir’, but you currently seem to be on ‘http://forums.svus.ir/admin/?module=config-plugins’. A wrong Board URL setting may cause problems with Redirect.
I need your help. My url is in this format : http://www.domain.com/thread-
I want the URLs like that: http://www.domain.com//
hi .how to change url with this format :
http://www.domain.com/thread-Topic-Your-Thread-Title/
vs
http://www.domain.com/thread-110/
How can I know whether it is functioning properly
Check on the plugins page, it should say something like “404, Meta, Redirect, Sitemap and URL are enabled.” and have a green checkmark. No other warnings should be shown.
When I use the .htaccess file I get the corrected URL in the address bar but an internal server error message on my index.php page.
I’ve had to disable the .htaccess file by renaming it and undo the core changes.