Also, article.php makes it possible to display your full articles in a way which is more search-engine friendly, and a simple hack should make it possible to have your "read more" link set to the spider-friendly yoursite.com/article.php?sid=65, instead of yoursite.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=65&mode=thread&order=0. This maintenance of the 0.64 article.php in the root directory appears to work for 0.7.
I discovered that google has my site's full articles listed always as http://www.webreachforpeace.org/article.php?sid=65, instead of http://www.webreachforpeace.org/article.php?sid=65&mode=thread&order=0. And /article.php?sid=65 does indeed work (on 0.7 it appears to, too, if article.php from 0.64 is in the root directory). Google was smart enough to chop off the rest. But this won't work for 0.7, because of the longer readmore links.
Google is well-known to us since it seems to be the only search engine at the moment that can trawl dynamic php sites like PN. However, it always cuts things off to the first = sign, it seems (otherwise there would be thousands of possibilities, and the googlebot has got better things to do with its time, however interesting your content may be). This is likely to change as other search engines get "smarter." But no matter how smart the search engine, they are never likely to go spider links with four = signs in them, so /article.php?sid=65 just makes your whole articles a whole lot more spiderable.
All the stuff after this in 0.64 (mode and order) are so users who configure "comments configuration" by changing the user options can have their pick as to how comments are displayed. But have YOU ever really done this? Imho this option is a bit of a legacy from phpnuke that should be eliminated from the user options--users are presented with these options whenever they display comments, anyways. I hacked this option out of user.php a while ago, and am considering hacking the News module (with the old article.php it's comments.php) so it only displays the "flat" read, which seems to be the most popular way of posting in forums, and seems to make reading/ordering discussion easier (as well as making things appear cleaner).
I'm still in the process of porting to 0.7 and haven't made any of these hacks yet. However, I'd be interested in hearing what the PN community thinks of these hacks before I make them (or maybe somebody out there is kind enough to do them for me)--especially, e.g., if there would be any security issues here. I haven't tested 0.64's article.php with 0.7 very much yet. Here is one big problem with it, though: article.php does not have the $preformat, $info or $links functions which are the new standard for 0.7 themes. If you want to use article.php, you will have to use $title instead of $preformat[catandtitle], to name one example...in other words, everything in function themearticle and function FormatStory of your theme.php will need to be set according the "backwards compatible" strings. Also, remember to upload the 0.64 comments.php as well.
The PN dev team is working on making PN with more search-friendly strings. The solution above could an option for some who have long articles needing to be spidered before this happens, although it's quite awkward. I'd like to hear more about what the PN community thinks about this.
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