[TYPO3] <- Prev | Next -> Article Navigation and SEO

[Morten Kjems]

Thanks Christopher!

Great that I don't even need an extension.

I have managed to create a simple << Prev | Next >> Navigation using
this TS:

lib.prevnextnav = HMENU
lib.prevnextnav {
    special = browse
    special {
    items = prev|next
    prev.fields.title = << Previous page
    next.fields.title = Next page >>
    }
      1 = TMENU
      1.NO {
       	linkWrap = | &#124; | *||
       	 }
       	 }

It works fine but it is still rather simple. I have not been able to
find any examples that allows access to the pages in between.

So I am still looking for some thing like this:
<< Prev |2|3|4|5| Next >>

Or even better a drop down menu like the one on your site (A great
initiative by the way).

Do you have some code for that?

I have not worked that much with menus so something to start out with 
would be a big help.





Christopher Torgalson skrev:
> Hi,
> 
> On 5/28/07, Morten Kjems <mortenkjems at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi. I am looking for an extension that will allow me to create a basic
>> article navigation for my pages.
>>
>> Something like: << Prev |2|3|4|5| Next >> would be fine but a dropdown
>> menu with "table of contents" between "Prev" and "Next" would be nice
>> (as seen here http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2996).
>>
>> There are several extensions that does something like that but many of
>> them are limited in many ways and they all lack one important factor.
>> None of them takes SEO (Search engine optimization) into consideration.
>>
>> Here a list of extensions that provides article navigation without
>> considering SEO:
>> 1. "Articles", is limited in a number of ways.
>> 2. "Article pages", limited - have not been updated in four years.
>> 3. "Content Navigation", No documentation.
>> 4. "Page Navigation", from 2004 does not seem to work with Templa Voila.
>> 5. "Content Browsing" Works fine, but for some reason it does not work
>> with "page comments" (the comments just dosn't show up when the page is
>> build with "Content Browsing")
>>
>> The first thing you learn when working with SEO is that the page title
>> is the most important factor when search engines are indexing a site.
>>
>> The problem with with the extensions above is that the page title will
>> remain the same for all pages in the article. So will the meta tags
>> "keywords" and "description" Especially "description" is important here
>> since it will be the appetizer describing the content of your article
>> right beneath the page title in Google.
>>
>> If you for example have a long article on how to install TYPO3 on a 
>> server.
>>
>> The page title would properly be something like this: "Installing TYPO3
>> on a server". And that would be the page title of all sections.
>>
>> But if you divide the article into sections one of the sections might be
>> about how to find a prober host. So all the content is about finding a
>> host but the page title will indicate that it is about installation.
>> This will confuse Google and the site will not rank well. If an
>> individual page title could be set For example "finding a host for
>> TYPO3" Google would have no problem in understanding the meaning of the
>> section/page. Therefor it would rank higher and more people would find
>> the relevant information.
>>
>> There are two extensions that makes this possible.
>>
>> 1. "Page browser". An individual page title can be set since it creates
>> navigation between pages and not content elements. The downside is that
>>   it is build around an index page that I will have no need for. Also
>> the navigation is dead simple: <- Prev | Next -> with no options to
>> access the pages in between.
>>
>> 2. "Relational link elements". I am not sure about this one. It is new
>> and I find the documentation hard to understand. Please enlighten me if
>> this is what I need.
>>
>> So what is the question? Is there an extension that provides article
>> navigation with a bit more options than just <- Prev | Next -> and also
>> addresses SEO.
>>
>> So far the best option is the extension "Page browser" since it allows
>> individual page titles. But the navigation part is almost to simple.
>>
>> All suggestions and comments are most welcome
> 
> 
> HMENU is more than adequate to this task. You have built-in capability
> for < prev | current | next > style menus, and virtually anything else
> you can think up. You can see a simple variant on what you're
> describing at the beginning and end of this page (click the '+' beside
> "Contents"): http://www.typo3apprentice.com/howto/rtfm/
> 
> Besides that, HMENU has the 'userdefined' property that "Lets you
> write your own little PHP-script that generates the array of
> menuitems" [1].
> 
>