To return to the Wiki Tech Notes index, click here.

For admins: Search-Engine Optimization:

This DokuWiki has been set up to be search-engine friendly. These settings are used:

In "conf/dokuwiki.php":
$conf['send404']    = 1;
$conf['sitemap']    = 1;
$conf['userewrite'] = 1;
$conf['useslash']   = 1;
 
In "conf/local.php":
$conf['indexdelay'] = 0;
$conf['sitemap']    = 1;

For this to work, some slightly tricky changes to the “nginx” “server” block used are required.

To browse a typical “server” block roughly as it is might be before the search-engine changes, click here. To browse the same block roughly as it would be after the changes, click here instead.

Note: The sample code at the preceding links assumes that DokuWiki is installed in a top-level subdirectory of the website domain named “doku”.

The “indexdelay” setting shown above allows modified pages to be indexed immediately. Note: The default setting can prevent pages from ever being indexed.

The “sitemap” setting, which is presently included in two places, is supposed to cause a Google-compatible sitemap to be generated daily.

“send404” tweaks DokuWiki behavior related to pages that don't exist yet. This change is believed to help slightly with SEO in some contexts.

The other settings and changes discussed here set things up so that DokuWiki uses simpler URLs for pages; i.e., URLs that are human readable and also friendly to search engines.

There's a DokuWiki friendly-URLs mode that's supposed to be easier to set up, specifically, setting “userewrite” to 2, but we haven't been able to get that mode to work.

To return to the Wiki Tech Notes index, click here.