The last 2 RSSeo! revisions have brought among new functionalities, some important crawler changes: the ability to use RSSeo! without loopback connections.
What does it mean?
To be able to analyze site pages, RSSeo! must first crawl your website. In order to perform this task, it requires at least one of the following functions to be enabled: cURL , fsockopen , fopen , file_get_contents. Most hosting providers impose some restrictions in using these, only allowing one of them and loopback connections. The last one (loopback), basically implies that a script can't get the content of page if the call to the function is made from the same host. You can imagine that this seriously affected the RSSeo! functionality, preventing the proper meta data management.
Beginning with RSSeo rev. 7 and 8, there are 2 more options available to run RSSeo!, besides using the loopback connections: connection via a configured proxy server and PHP exec function.
Recommended workflow:
Option 1: Loopback connections via cURL , fsockopen , fopen or file_get_contents
(available for all RSSeo! revisions)
This is part of the RSSeo! minimum requirements: to be able to run RSSeo! you must have enabled at least one of the following functions cURL , fsockopen , fopen , file_get_contents.
In case your hosting provider doesn't allow loopback connections, then head to the second option.
Option 2: the exec function
(starting with rev. 7)Many hosting providers that restrict the usage of the loopback connections will allow the use of the PHP exec function, to execute external programs.
Although the installation of RSSeo! remains basically the same when using this function, there are some additional steps to go trough: you need to download the indexseo.php file from your RSJoomla! account, unzip it, copy the file in the root Joomla! installation folder and modify the crawler settings from the Joomla! backend panel. Detailed instructions of installing the indexseo.php file you'll find in the article:
How can you use RSSeo! without loopback connections.
If the hosting provider does not allow the use of exec you can use the third option.
Option 3: proxy cURL connect
(beginning with rev. 8 )If you can't use neither loopback connections nor the exec function, you can connect trough cURL (requires the cURL function to be enabled) with proxy. The advantage of using proxy is that the page content requests won't be made anymore trough the loopback connections or the exec function, but by another server.
Other new features or fixes on the last 2 revisions:
Rev. 8
- Added Backup / Restore functionality (for Pages and Redirects): a new tab has been introduced in rev. 8, that lets you backup and restore the pages and the redirect links stored by RSSeo!
The backup/restore process is simple: upon clicking on the Backup link, save the archive. To restore the pages and redirects, click on the Restore link.
Rev. 7
- Added - Check for internal and external links on pages.: a new SEO feature available in the "Pages" tab. Checks the number of internal and external links per page and gives a recommendation if it is higher than 100.
- Added - Export competitors: usefully when you have a large number of competitors and you need to analyze the SEO data in an Excel file.
