Applying SEO best practices to a CMS is a pretty heavy topic. A lot of critics will tell you no, but I'll show you how you can have the best of both words.

I just started using Xoops about two weeks ago and I won't lie - I'm addicted! What a fantastic tool for managing content and advertising. But is it SEO compliant? From the initial installation, the answer is no. However, with a few tweeks your Xoops site can comply with all the current SEO best practices.

The first SEO tweek you'll want to make is to your template. The Xoops template has a lot more code than necessary. You'll want to install a clean css-based template. You can either search Google for Xoops templates or visit Aston Themes for some really good samples.

Once your template is up, you're going to want to change the dynamic URLs to static URLs. You can do this by installing a simple hack created by Sim Suin called "Simplified URL ". Once the hack is installed, you'll notice your "top" page disappeared. You can fix this by editing the file loadpage.php. Modify the startup module by changing $start_module = "news" to $start_module = " ".

I'm still working with a script to modify Meta Tags based on content and will keep you posted. In the interim at least you'll have some great SEO content, using a clean css template and static URLs.

Xoops is a Content Management System (CMS) developed as an integrated tool for installing custom features (modules), managing articles, forums, news, and 3rd party advertising. It can be downloaded completely free at Xoops.org .