Google, Mambo (or other CMS) and Sessions

[steved1956]

I have searched everywhere to find a definitive answer to this, so now I'm posting to a couple of places that should have the people with the answers. :)

Once I've got a handle on it I'll summarise here and hopefully it'll be of help to other people with the same questions.

My main question and the one I can't really find an answer to is: -

How do Mambo particularly and other portal/CMS applications deal with always having a session and how does that impact on the ranking in Google and other engines?

Will my Mambo site's content be spidered effectively or will sessions and other issues I haven't considered mean this won't happen?

Thank you for taking the time to read this, please post if you have any useful info I'll summarise what I learn here and at the other sites when we're done.

Regards


Steve

PS First time post - long time lurker :)

[tony]

i think mambo is the best for getting your pages spidered as apposed to php nuke etc
BUT, im not a big fan of CMS's none that ive found have been very good only commercial ones, but im starting to make my own hopefully that will be better than any out there now :D ...i can dream

[MarkB]

You could always look into having blog software act as your CMS.

[incka]

Vrating make pages look static even with .html at the end. Try that.

[James]

Many people find the most happyness having custom CMSs made for them.

And I think there's a way to manipulate URLs with strings or something, rather than mod_rewrite--which is good.

[ozgression]

Yeah, I recommend getting a custom CMS, also. Most commercial & Open source CMSs I've seen are bloated and hard to customize.
________
Dodge Ram 50 history (http://www.dodge-wiki.com/wiki/Dodge_Ram_50)

[steved1956]

Vrating make pages look static even with .html at the end. Try that.

Thanks for the tip Incka.

Went to have a look at Vrating and it appears that it actually "makes" static content every hour or whatever you set which is quite cool but not necessarily what I need. Went to look at the demo and unfortunately got a full page of warnings and notices when the db connection failed which didn't inspire me with confidence :( so I didn't look any further.

As the new kid (ok old geezer) I have no wish to upset anyone so if Vrating has anything to do with you let me know.

Regards

Steve

[steved1956]

Thanks for all the posts so far as a new poster you never know what a community is really like and your willingness to help is much appreciated.

At the risk of straying off my own topic I'll give you some more info and see if you have any other good comments for me.

I built an application which has to be dynamic, it's purpose is to provide price information from large tables 1million plus rows and it all works well.

However to get it better ranking and make it more useful I need to add content and judging from the opinions on here - lots of it. My initial design didn't take that into account and while I could buy a cms, have one built or build one myself, I really want it done quickly which I think I can do with Mambo.

My initial application relies heavily on sessions, I'll try to avoid that next time but that's where I'm at. But if Mambo effectively uses SEF urls and it seems to, and if the sessions are not a problem with the search engines then it's worth my time integrating the two. There are some other benefits - as a non-designer I can let all the content formatting be done by the CMS.

Any more comments gratefully received.

Regards

Steve

[Dan Morgan]

I use Mambo for my main site, and as far it being SEF, I have had great results.

A few tweaks here and there and I have achieved some great SERP postions. Although the market I exist in isnot firecly competitive and lucrative, it is still established (I do this for the topic not the revenue it generates).

I am about to buy the Advanced SEF, but even with the standard SEF it works ok. never had a problem with sessions.

Although I am using Mambo 4.5 (1.0.9), the newest version is out, 4.5.1 which I have not had any experience with yet.

[steved1956]

I use Mambo for my main site, and as far it being SEF, I have had great results.

Thanks for the reply Dan, nice site though it did give me a twinge in the shoulder that I broke in March and am still having physio for :(

Off waterskiing in 4weeks so I'll try not to break it again.

Had a look at your site in couple of "How the search engines see you" type things and it seemed fine - very encouraging

[pierrebenoit]

Yeah, I recommend getting a custom CMS, also. Most commercial & Open source CMSs I've seen are bloated and hard to customize.

It only take 15 minutes to install and configure Wordpress as a CMS.
The big advantages I found with some CMS is the RSS and the automatic url submission

[incka]

Vrating is hard to get set up and is best for humor sites, but it will work for other sites. I've bought myself a copy for a site I'm making and it is really good. Join HumorWeb.net webmaster boards and find threads about it, about 75% of the humor webmasters their use it...

[James]

I haven't heard of vRating being used for anything but humor sites until now.

I believe that he's sort of required to own or webmaster a humor website if you are part of Humor Web (I didn't know that you were, until a few days ago, Incka.) Though I'm sure that the owners wont mind you joining if you say that you're interested in vRating and want some advice on it from some of the people who would know the best about it.

[incka]

I PM the admin to accept people I know.