This forum's mod...

I noticed all of the files, when in guest mode, are listed as .html pages and that this IS phpBB. I love that! How do you go about doing that? What MOD?

I'm not sure if this is the same as the one used here but there is a mod you can use to do this at:
http://phpbbhacks.com/viewhack.php?id=2207

its not a mod. its a cloaking script that bw uses.

i can't find the thread, but i am sure it is a phpbb mod, and I'm fairly sure that it is that particular one. It works in combination with the mod_rewrite apache module to allow urls with .html on the end to be rewritten to something like viewtopic.php?p=59057#59057

looks like it rewrote the url I put into the post, too. lol

It's mod_rewrite, like rjstephens says. IT's fairly easy to implement, and there are a few other hacks required to the source to remove session IDs & such from the URLs, but yeah, it's basically just rewriting URLs.

So it uses cloaking? :-/

I checked it out and on the download from the link you gave me it gives a 404 not found error...arg! It does, however, look like what I'm looking for.

No, it's not "cloaking". Cloaking is a method by which you send one lot of content to search engines, and a different content to real web browsers (thus tricking the search engines into thinking you have more/better quality information than you actually do). Often the page sent to a search engine is just spam-loaded nonsensical crap

This is completely different, and a completely legitimate method of altering your URLs in order to produce a more friendly display.

Search engines see NOTHING wrong with this, and MANY MANY websites incorporate this type of technology.

Search engines understand the need for dynamic database driven websites, but they simply can't understand many of the URLs that generate this content. The REAL locations of these pages still work, however the addresses that the website sends out, and the address that you type into your browser are merely pointers.

This has other, completely legitimate, advantages too. In E-Mail for example, I can't count the number of times I've seen somebody paste a URL to a mailing list, only to have to copy+paste several lines of text into a single line using notepad in order to place it in a browser's location bar. Shorter URLs mostly do not wrap across multiple lines allowing them to be easily clickable (in text-based E-Mail, with your client converting the text into links).

So this is a completely legitimate method of producing more friendly URLs. You are not hiding information, you are not sending one thing to search engines and another to your real visitors. The search engines are seeing exactly what regular visitors to your website would see, which is 100% perfectly legit.

whatlikesit12345 simply doesn't know what he's talking about some of the time, or all the correct terminology

Hehe... OK... I'm using the script from http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15132 .
It disables session IDs (which is GOOOD...), but this mod_rewrite seems to conflict with it. When I installed mod_rewrite it seemed to totally gimp up the forum where it tried to enable session ID's but they were screwed up altogethor.

Any advice? :-/
Thanks for your help.

yup , mod_rewrite is the shnizzle.

fo shizzle

Hehe... I quote myself again. What's the deal? Anyone got a demo I can browse of what phpBB looks like with only mod_rewrite modded on? Obviously the mod I picked up from able2know conflicts with it.

Maybe try uninstalling that other mod before you install the new mod and see if that resolves your problem.

I also checked and got a 404 not found error, is there another link....