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Is there a way to edit what goes into the Signature field for forum profiles in SER?

mattb348mattb348
in GSA Search Engine Ranker
I can't find a spot to edit the information that goes into the Signature field for forum profiles when using SER.

This would be a great addition; the "Signature" field for forum profiles actually allows a good amount of information to be added on most forum engines. IE: The character count can be pretty high. This means that you could add multiple links in that field.

Comments

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    Next version lets you edit it. Though keep in mind that this is usually just one line that is supported.
  • mattb348mattb348
    Sounds great. I remember a few years back when I used to do a lot of forum profile spam, you could usually get like 2+ sentences in the sig field :)
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    Would be nice to know what engines support what amount of chars here. Would be easier to configure the engines.
  • mattb348mattb348
    I will do the research and get back to you on that don't worry :)
  • mattb348mattb348
    Ok, so here is the deal:

    Nearly all of the forum engines seem to have the signature field disabled (either that or SER is not properly filling in the sig field on certain engines).

    PHP-Nuke and maybe a couple other forum engines DO seem to have the sig field enabled (or at least SER is filling that field in on those engines).

    However, there are two pretty obvious issues even then, which are:

    1. SER is not making proper links. Instead, they show up like this:  <a href=http://www.thedomainnamehere.com>anchor text here</a>

    Note how there are no quotes before the "http and after the end of the URL (IE: after the .com). The url is literally showing up as broken html code as shown above.

    Perhaps SER isn't doing the urls in proper forum format, which is generally:   [URL=http://www.whatever.com]ANCHOR TEXT HERE[/URL]   (or something like that... it has been years since I have used that code :)

    Or maybe most of the forum engines don't allow active urls in a sig? I dunno..

    Interestingly enough, SOME of my forum profiles created by SER did make proper urls with anchor text, in the SIG field, but most failed, and made broken html code for the urls.

    2. I have noticed that the (very few) forum engines that DID allow the SIG field to be filled in by SER, seemed to have RANDOM character limits set for how much characters/text are allowed in the sig field.

    In other words, the administrator has the option to change how many characters are allowed in the SIG field. And based on my limited research, that amount seems to vary a LOT, even when just testing on the same exact forum engines (IE: PHP-Nuke).

    Bottom line:  there is no way to have SER know exactly how many characters are allowed in the SIG field, because it varies, and is determined by the admin that setup the forum.

    Anyways, how about looking into fixing how SER populates the SIG field? As it is, it is failing about 90% of the time, and is creating broken urls/html code when trying to place links in the SIG field :(

    Hope this helps!
  • mattb348mattb348
    Yikes looks like this forum messed up the urls that I put in my post as an example... but hopefully you get the idea :)
  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de

    Even though it's nice you debugging this a bit. We would need real sample URLs to play with.

    Signatures are used in the following engines:

    DZCP
    FluxBB
    FUDforum
    MyBB
    phpBB
    PHP-Nuke
    PunBB
    SMF
    UseBB
    vBulletin
    vBulletin - Blog
    webSPELL
    XMB
    XOOPS

    But of course not every engine is configured to show the input field and allow it. Just that I saw some of the sites having an input field here.

    For the length: Well SER already tries to detect things on the webform itself where sometimes the limitation is used in the input/textarea field itself. But would be nice to have some default length after all.

  • mattb348mattb348
    Ok, I will def. get some urls for all of the forum engines that I am currently submitting to.

    I am sure that there are more engines out there than I am submitting to, but I am just using the "Red List" that I bought from Ron, which may not have all of the forum engines.

    I hate scraping so I like to just buy lists :)
  • mattb348mattb348
    Hmmmmmm it seems that I was definitely mistaken with my previous post(s).

    I changed some settings and also put less text in the "SIG" field etc., and it worked WAY better, on all forum engines.

    My URLS no longer became broken and they worked fine on most engines, on most sites, and in most cases all of my urls/text fit, or at least the majority of it.

    Some engines let multiple urls fit (and work properly) in the "Bio" field too.

    These Engines worked great in most cases:

    Burning Board - USUALLY ALLOWS FULL SIG AND FORUM COMMENT, AND LINKS WORK PERFECT

    PHP-NUKE - USUALLY ALLOWS FULL SIG, AND LINKS WORK PERFECT

    Expression Engine - NO SIG, BUT ALLOWED ALL OF MY URLS TO FIT WITHIN "BIO" FIELD, AND MOST URLS WERE FINE

    FLUXX BB - NEARLY FULL SIG ALWAYS SEEMS TO WORK AND URLS WORKED PERFECT


    You wanted sample urls to check, and I will PM them to you :)

    BTW, I noticed that there hardly seems to be any SMF forums now a days, at least not in Ron's Red List (which is HUGE).

    Why is that? Back in the day, when I used to use "Sick Submitter", there used to be TONS of SMF forums, and they always worked perfect and the engine usually allowed a long @ss sig :)

  • SvenSven www.GSA-Online.de
    the SMF uses captchas who are hard to solve..if you have no human solving here its almost useless.
  • mattb348mattb348
    Hmmmmmm good to know. Thanks :)
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