Wedge

Public area => The Pub => Off-topic => Topic started by: Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:33 AM

Title: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:33 AM
I've been wondering, before I make the move of my blog to Wedge, is it worth spending time chasing the SEO dragon?

I've got a month's worth (9, if you're wondering) blog posts already pre-written, none of them keyword rich or any of that BS (and I refuse to alter my content for that), but is it worth spending a little time with the other stuff (like we'd likely implement in Wedge anyway)?

Note that I am going to be moving it to Wedge once the blogging stuff is done, with my custom styling Worldwind, so any SEO impact by Wedge will automatically up the ante.

I wonder if we should add the month-based navigation that's in WP, might be useful.

/mealso wonders who gets the title to this topic.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: live627 on April 7th, 2011, 02:51 AM
Quote from Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:33 AM
/mealso wonders who gets the title to this topic.
No? Here's a blind guess, though... knowing you like to watch Dr. Who, is it a reference from one of those episodes?
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:55 AM
Quote from live627 on April 7th, 2011, 02:51 AM
Quote from Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:33 AM
/mealso wonders who gets the title to this topic.
No? Here's a blind guess, though... knowing you like to watch Dr. Who, is it a reference from one of those episodes?Good idea, but no. Big clue: Peter Sellers. When you hit up IMDb and find it, go get it and watch it. Very good film.

EDIT: How could you not love a film that has the line, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: borg1985 on April 7th, 2011, 04:19 AM
Quote from Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:33 AM
/mealso wonders who gets the title to this topic.
"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/)

Great movie... though I really need to watch it again... heads to Netflix.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Asgard on April 7th, 2011, 04:26 AM
Before? That depends on a few items.

1. Do you plan to keep your blog updated with the latest and greatest version of Wedge as it becomes available?
2. Will any SEO doodads work on existing content if it's implemented after the initial change (as an update per the above)?
3. Do you plan to promote your blog?

I think you're just itching to get moved over to Wedge (and I can't fault you for that), if the above answers to 1 and 2 are yes and yes then I don't see any reason to postpone your move any longer than necessary. For #3, if you answer No, then I'm not sure how much value you would get by waiting, if yes, then it might be worthwhile, but I still doubt it.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 09:36 AM
1. Sporadically more than true bleeding edge, but over time that's the general plan.

2. I have no plans to touch the content in any way, so any doodads should be transferrable.

3. Yes, but I'm not going to go batshit crazy about it; I'm not going to suddenly start bidding on AdWords for it, nor am I going to start shifting ads via it (though, I had considered the possibility)

It's more a case of 'is it worth me messing about a bit in the meantime while Wedge's feature set matures where needed for blogging', really.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Dragooon on April 7th, 2011, 09:40 AM
Did anyone call a Dragon? Oh...SEO Dragon, sorry, that is my distant relative. I am more familiar with PHP Dragon, I also know CSS Dragon but she hates me.

Kind of OT but I'd personally like a month browser if you're building a blog into Wedge, I mean it is pretty standard for blogs to have categories and months and I don't see it being that much of a pain.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 09:43 AM
Yeah, that's something we possibly should add - but it's the sort of thing I'd probably expand through the calendar, I mean, it's something of a white elephant, so making it useful would be awesome.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Aaron on April 7th, 2011, 11:05 AM
The only thing I'd really worry about, is sending proper 301 status codes i.e. redirecting old urls to their respective new location.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Nao on April 7th, 2011, 01:33 PM
Quote from Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:33 AM
I've been wondering, before I make the move of my blog to Wedge, is it worth spending time chasing the SEO dragon?
I don't know, for me, SEO is just about writing good content... What is usually considered as SEO is just the whole aspect of making it easier for machines to read our contents. i.e. using the <article> tag on blog posts, having a RSS feed, things like that. Keywords are a thing of the past, to me, they're more targeted to users (as tags)...
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Note that I am going to be moving it to Wedge once the blogging stuff is done, with my custom styling Worldwind, so any SEO impact by Wedge will automatically up the ante.
Worldwind eh? So how's it coming together BTW...? Here's me wondering if you've been changing it a lot. Considering it'll be the first live website based on Wedge (although I'm sure Bloc will be glad to know he can go live as well as soon as InI is), I'm hoping I can get a glimpse before others do :P
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I wonder if we should add the month-based navigation that's in WP, might be useful.
You mean, the calendar stuff? I'm not a fan of these (never implemented it in Noisen). However I am a big fan of dropdowns with month+year. All of this code can be found in the Noisen patch I sent you, if you're in a hurry to implement it (it works really well.) Otherwise, I can do it but not before I'm done with blocks, and making AeMe work at least on the surface.
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/mealso wonders who gets the title to this topic.
Question should be, who doesn't :P
This is black comedy done 100% right.
Posted: April 7th, 2011, 01:32 PM
Quote from Dragooon on April 7th, 2011, 09:40 AM
Did anyone call a Dragon? Oh...SEO Dragon, sorry, that is my distant relative. I am more familiar with PHP Dragon, I also know CSS Dragon but she hates me.
Did you have views on her? I sympathize.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: MultiformeIngegno on April 7th, 2011, 01:39 PM
@Arantor: did you try Wordpress SEO(http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/)? It's freaking good!! :o
It boosted a lot my ranking on Google!
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 01:43 PM
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Here's me wondering if you've been changing it a lot.
I poked it briefly after you made Wine the default, stuff got broken, I need to sit and tweak it again to fix. I'm pretty happy with the blue colour scheme and the header, all told, so once I get it back to there, I don't see my changing it much. Where design is concerned, I'm a relatively simple creature.
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You mean, the calendar stuff?
Well, part of the calendar stuff; something like this is an ideal way to make the calendar actually usable.
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This is black comedy done 100% right.
Indeed it is... that line still sticks in my brain. I mean, what is a war room if you can't fight?
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did you try Wordpress SEO? It's freaking good!!
Right now my WP blog is 100% unmodified WP 3.1.1 (yes, ANOTHER security patch of recent times), so I'm curious to see what improvements can be made on the 'SEO' front, even knowing as I do that the concept is normally banal, I do want to make sure that we minimise the whiners as much as possible.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: DoctorMalboro on April 7th, 2011, 02:09 PM
No.

As simple as that...
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Nao on April 7th, 2011, 02:38 PM
Quote from Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 01:43 PM
I poked it briefly after you made Wine the default, stuff got broken,
Oh it's a classic ;)
Until we move to a final state where it's pretty good and optimized and stuff, it might still break in inherited stylings.
We're getting close, though... For instance, I'm feeling no need to rework the visuals of Wine now. It's a first! :eheh: And definitely a sign that my design has reached its cruising speed.
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I need to sit and tweak it again to fix. I'm pretty happy with the blue colour scheme and the header, all told,
Will you be using the header block for it? Or just use CSS?
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Indeed it is... that line still sticks in my brain. I mean, what is a war room if you can't fight?
I think you can only fight in it if it also doubles up as a nuke shelter.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Arantor on April 7th, 2011, 02:42 PM
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Until we move to a final state where it's pretty good and optimized and stuff, it might still break in inherited stylings.
For the most part there's not a lot different, it is basically colours.
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Will you be using the header block for it? Or just use CSS?
I have an image for replacing the top header, but it's mostly just CSS. I did also use another grad40 image, specifically I flipped it vertically, so it goes from light to dark, and it's in the same directory under the name grad40i.
Title: Re: Dr S.E. Optimisation, or How I Learned To Stop WP and love the Wedge
Post by: Arantor on April 8th, 2011, 02:27 AM
Going back on topic, I took a look at that plugin, and it's certainly given me food for thought.

Firstly, it does sort of piss on the notion that WordPress is SEO friendly out of the box like I've heard a number preach.

It claims to provide support in these areas:
* Post titles and meta descriptions
* Robots Meta configuration
* Canonical
* Breadcrumbs
* Permalink clean up
* XML Sitemaps
* RSS enhancements
* Edit your robots.txt and .htaccess
* Clean up head section

There is definite food for thought, let's examine one by one what they're claiming and what I think we should do for Wedge, if only to placate the 'OMG MUST HAZ SEO' crowd.

* Post titles and meta descriptions
There is, I'll grudgingly admit, some validity to passing something meaningful in the meta description - at least in our case. There isn't for the conventional forum because the conventional forum is user driven.

But a blog, oh that's where it all changes, because a blog isn't primarily user-driven in content submission. It's admin driven. Which means there's a decent chance that something like this might be useful to include.

More specifically, blog posts having some meta content that wouldn't normally be presented.

For forum posts, I'd be inclined to follow the sheep on this one and put the first post into the description of the thread, since that's no worse than the current status quo of using the thread title, and odds are it will improve matters marginally. (It will, at least, cut support queries)

* Robots meta configuration
SMF and Wedge pretty much get this right so far, but it does seem interesting to be able to have areas that are publicly accessible but controllably hidden. I would certainly be interested in adding the option WP has to 'hide' it from search engines without denying access.

* Canonical
Other than a possible bug with PHPSESSID, this is pretty much all set in the core anyway (and it's not down to us if a mod breaks it). Though the point with the calendar is well made, that we should ensure that's fixed as and when we expand the calendar.

* Breadcrumbs
I don't see any need to make the linktree accessible from an administrative POV; if people want to change how it operates, fine, but there's no need to change it out of the box otherwise.

* Permalink clean up
Hmm, that's interesting, forcing redirects back to original content. Not quite sure what to do with that one yet.

* XML Sitemaps
I've made it clear that I'm interested in adding both an XML and human readable sitemap.

* RSS enhancements
The ability to add content to the beginning or end of the RSS feed entries, like a link back to the post in question actually embedded in the content. That's not actually a bad idea.

* Edit your robots.txt or .htaccess
If we provide sane files in the first place, there's not really any great need to have them be 'readily editable', anyone messing with them should know what they're doing.

* Clean up the head section
WP's head is full of crap, like the XMLRPC interface URIs and some inline CSS. Most of our header is much more interesting and useful - everything is worth keeping IMO, and our default head is shorter than WP's ;)