Add keywords and description to phpBB’s index page without installing a mod

In these days of intelligent search engines, meta keywords and descriptions do not play a major role in SEO. Crawlers are more interested in the contents of the page rather than it’s keywords and descriptions. However, some people might still want to add keywords and descriptions to their pages, seeing that search engines like Yahoo still put some weightage on them.

A vanilla phpBB installation does contain keyword and description meta element, but they do not have any content. Here’s an easy to add meta keywords and description to phpBB’s index page without installing and/or maintaining any kind of a mod.

• Go to /styles/prosilver/template/ and open the overall_header.html file with your favourite text editor. Click Edit > Select all, or just press ‘Ctrl +A’. After that, copy the selected code by clicking Edit > Copy or by pressing ‘Ctrl + V’.

• Create a new HTML file in the same directory and name it index_header.html.

• Open the newly created file and paste the contents of the clipboard in it.

• In index_header.html, find :
  [sourcecode language=”html”][/sourcecode] Replace with :

  [sourcecode language=”html”][/sourcecode]

  Find :

  [sourcecode language=”html”][/sourcecode]

  Replace with :

  [sourcecode language=”html”][/sourcecode]

  • Open /styles/prosilver/template/index_body.html.
  • Find :
    [sourcecode language=”html”]<!– INCLUDE overall_header.html –>[/sourcecode]
  • Replace with : [sourcecode language=”html”]<!– INCLUDE index_header.html –>[/sourcecode]

  From now on remember to update index_header.html when you make changes to overall_header.html, or else, the changes won’t show up in the index page.