How to edit phpBB3 SEO friendly

After installation of phpbb3 you will notice all your title tags and Meta tags doesn’t appear as you want.

First backup all your files before editing.

Below is how you will edit your title tags.

I will suggest not adding keywords in that section. I will explain below how to add your keywords

Now if you want to add keywords to your title only in your forum home pages so let says you want your title to be something like:

Example – example forum, topic, good example.

In your board settings change the site name to example.

Open the file ‘/language/en/common.php’ in your phpbb3 folder

Between line 275 and 276 you will see the line

‘INDEX’ => ‘Index page’,

Change it to the following line:

‘INDEX’ => ‘example forum, topic, good example,

If you view your forum you will see the title appear something like

Example dot example forum, topic, good example

To replace the dot with either - or | :-

Open the folder cache, open the file tpl_prosilver_overall_header.html

Between line 16 and 17 you will see the line

<title><?php echo (isset($this->_rootref['SITENAME'])) ? $this->_rootref['SITENAME'] : ''; ?> &bull;

Replace that with the following line

<title><?php echo (isset($this->_rootref['SITENAME'])) ? $this->_rootref['SITENAME'] : ''; ?> - (dash)

If you don’t want keywords in your title leave the index blank like the one below

‘INDEX’ => ‘ ’,

At default phpbb3 leaves all your forum titles to view forum and all your forum title will appear along with view forum.

So if your forum title was cars then it will appear something like view forum and then cars.

Below is how you will edit:

Open the file viewforum.php in the root of your phpbb3 forum

Between line 143 and 145 you will see the following line

page_header($user->lang['VIEW_FORUM'] . ' - ' . $forum_data['forum_name'], true, $forum_id);

Edit that line with the following line:

page_header($user->lang[' '] . ' ' . $forum_data['forum_name'], true, $forum_id);

The word viewforum will be removed from the page title so when users visit your forum they will only see your site name and the forum title.

You will still notice in your forum all the topic appears to be viewtopic follow with your forum topic

To edit that do the following, this is similar to step2

Open the file viewtopic.php in the root of your phpbb3 forum

Between line 1756 and 1759 you will see the following

page_header($user->lang['VIEW_TOPIC'] . ' - ' . $topic_data['topic_title'], true, $forum_id);

Edit that line with the following line :

page_header($user->lang[' '] . ' ' . $topic_data['topic_title'], true, $forum_id);

You will now notice that all your forum topic appear along with your site name instead of viewtopic followed by the topic of your forum.

Only do step4 if you will like to add Meta description to only your forum home page

You will notice that if you add Meta description to your forum, it will appear in all your pages instead of appearing on only your home page.

Do the following to edit:-

Open the folder cache, open the file tpl_prosilver_overall_header.html

Between lines 13 you will see the following line

<meta name="description" content="" />

Add your forum description like

<meta name="description" content=" example forum is a forum for sharing" />

Save the file as

tpl_prosilver_overall_header1.html.php

Now open the folder cache again and open the file tpl_prosilver_index_body.html

Between lines 1 you will see the following line

<?php if (!defined('IN_PHPBB')) exit; $this->_tpl_include('overall_header.html'); ?>

Edit that line with the following line

<?php if (!defined('IN_PHPBB')) exit; $this->_tpl_include('overall_header1.html'); ?>

Now your forum home page should have a Meta description which will only appear in the forum home page.

In conclusion

Having the same Meta description and title tags in all your pages can affect your site so always make sure your site have a different title tags and Meta description in all pages.

Please if you any questions or issues let me know.