X3Photo Gallery Forums

VipeR wrote:I found a little problem related to the search engines.
Search engines index html-version, respectively, and links from search engines lead to the html-version of the gallery.
Is it possible to make a forced redirect to flash-version, if flash player installed? Or make html-version is available only for search bots?
Thanks.

Of course a valid question, but I think you underestimate google and other search engines. If you put re-directs in there, the google bots will see them and either follow them(which means they wont be able to index the following page), or penalize your site for trying to mislead your visitors.

Im afraid that having a HTML version was a workaround method being able to have the search engines index your pages at all. If a visitor lands on one of your pages, they can click the "flash" link in top right to view the same page in flash.

I am curious though - Exactly what search phrase leads to a visitor landing on one of your sub pages?

Well, no...i don't think he's having a unique problem due to any special coding. That is simply how google sees the gallery.

All the IV HTML pages, except (apparently) the actual individual image pages (in my experience) are indexed.

That, along with the fact that flash is simply not a good platform for SEO, means for optimal SEO results, a current IV host really needs other / better / independent means for driving traffic to an IV site.

An accompanying blog or linking from high traffic sharing sites such as flickr are good (probably the best) methods.

markam24 wrote:Well, no...i don't think he's having a unique problem due to any special coding. That is simply how google sees the gallery.

All the IV HTML pages, except (apparently) the actual individual image pages (in my experience) are indexed.

That, along with the fact that flash is simply not a good platform for SEO, means for optimal SEO results, a current IV host really needs other / better / independent means for driving traffic to an IV site.

An accompanying blog or linking from high traffic sharing sites such as flickr are good (probably the best) methods.

Intriguing, I'm actually trying to go through the process of making the site generically SEO friendly, very hard btw Karl/Pain when theirs lots of random .CSS files all over the shot...

Please try and consolidate this in X3...one .css file clearly organised would be a DREAM! Annotated would be a nirvana!!

I googled the "Oops - it appears you need flash / javascript" that appears for non-flash users. I'm here now to find / edit that page. The top 4 results are Imagevue! It makes white labeling this product nearly impossible. Which for certain license holders is great, but for commercial licensee's it's a nightmare!

The limitations for SEO don't end there either the directories can't be renamed, the flash elements, the ID's Tags and Classes, Some of the DataBase entries etc etc...

I think one of the major things that's important about X3 should be the flexibility to edit 99.9% of the elements that lead user's or google back to this site.

Anyway said too much already, I was only going to reply quickly, ended up waffling on.

SEO...Important stuff would like to here more! Stickies!!!!

Flash is inherently bad for SEO. Unless there is the promise of richer / more SEO friendly html backend, I wouldn't count on IV for any deep indexing.

Hopefully more HTML is in the works for IV, as better SEO ranks high in FB requests, and HTML is best way to improve.

In the meantime I'm hosting a WP blog along side IV. Because of the nature of "posting" and pinging notification services, WP posts are picked up almost instantaneously by google.

having the same problem now.

early i have not used html-gallery, and make all SEO in one file ( by default there are index_example.html ).
all was OK.
but some days ago my site was kicked from the top. Till this moment i want use HTML version to be scanned by search engines and making seo by good methods. So the same question, I want my visitors (from search engines to HTML version of gallery) to open FLASH gallery by default. Using java redirect it is dangerous for seo. All i found is to make the same SWF injection like in default file index_example.html which loads SWF gallery and been indexing without problems.
There are two ways of solve^
1) handmade a group of plain html files like index_example with content you want (or copied from flash version)
all these files will be in google's cach and all these files will open SWF gallery without problem.
2) TO change the code of layout.phtml file which will get the effect above, but you would not be make all paged by your hands.
I tried to insert the code but it dont works. When i open HTML gallery it doesnot load SWF and nothing redirected.
Please help me to make the right code to have the effect of redirect like in index_example.html.

I am not quite sure what you are trying to do. The reason Google links to a html page, is because it sees that page as beneficial to the search. If you change this page so that uses SWF instead of html, then Google will change also. How can you inject the SWF into the html page without interrupting the effect of the html page?

What search phrase exactly were you kicked from a top? only searching for specific images maybe would have any effect, because indexing to your main home page has no effect if it is html version or flash version.

What version of Imagevue are you using? There were some improvements here as of lately.

i'm using the last version.
and i making a site in a top, with creating SEO of renamed files index_example.html which contains all information that manually added to them. and this files indexing without any problems. but when the visitor click them from search engine , it will immediatelly loads an swf version. This action made by special code

swfobject.embedSWF

which inserted in html file. So, my problem is to add such code to html-template(i think that it should be layout.phtml file) which used in HTML-version. In this decision google will index thу HTML version but when visitor is directed to any html page, it will load imagevue2.swf. Please help me to insert the right code to phtml template which will load the imagevue2.swf.

I still would like to see know search phrase for example you are looking at here ...

Also, even if you do inject the SWF file into the html template, how are you going to get Imagevue to go to the correct image?

... and you are going to inject SWF, and what about the other html? Are you going to keep the original html ALSO? or are you going to replace it??

To be honest, I really don't see what you are trying to do or how it will work. You can't fool Google like this ...

I believe Karl is 100% correct here. All my experience with redirected pages is that google will drop the page with the redirect and index the target....and if the target is SWF then all it's limitations with re: to indexing still apply.

If you are going to use the html pages it makes the most sense to leave it to the user to click over to flash.

Hopefully the IV version with an updated html side (2 versions down the line?) will include image pages which are more google friendly, so all the image meta data can be mined. This is the real area where IV is stunted.

after hours of working i have SOLVED the problem of "safe" redirection to flash version in version 2.6.4.

If We enable html version for better SEO indexing and if we want our visitors from search engines to see a good and beauty flash version not a html, we should add some to layout.phtml:

1) add 2 lines into the head-tag 2) insert between <?php endif; ?>
and
<div id="wrap">

3) insert before "</body>" tag So, if the visitor's computer able to view FLASH, the flash version will load, and if the flash player is not installed, visitor will see our basic html page. Note, that in case of FLASH version the main page will be loaded.

Thanks for the ideas. We will try to implement some improvements in new HTML version which we will be focusing on after release of Imagevue X2.7.

This is interesting idea, the only thing - if you will click the links, the url will change to

http://site/?/landingimage.jpg#anotherimage.jpg

And this looks bit messy. We could try to use hashbangs like twitter, but this is not the best idea:

http://www.isolani.co.uk/blog/javascrip ... hHashBangs

Actually the solution might be simple: rewrite url when flash is loaded and change the query string from /?/path to /#/path. Certainly something to think about.

it's so complicated..
While navigating inside my site I have not faced with error links like you described.
in HTML version i haму all links direct without any # symbols.
like this: http://mysite/?content%2Ffoldername%2F
Navigating and viewing is working correctly with swithched off Adobe flash player.
LiteView in settings is on.

Do you have a link to your gallery? I would like to take a look ...

Thanks for keeping us posted.