Two sites. One forum. Different styles/URL.

[cmeinck]

I'm currently running v.3.07, but plan on upgrading to 3.5.

Anyway, this is my situation. I have a site - SITE A that has a very robust community - let's just say it's about Widgets. Now, I just launched a site - SITE B that focuses on Blue Widgets only. Now, instead of creating a whole new community, I was thinking of linking from Site B to Site A's forum. Over a VB.com, it was mentioned that it's possible to have sitea.com/forum and siteb.com/forum use different styles yet pull the same content. This way, I'm able to create an "instant" community on site b and keep the branding on Site B.

I'm not sure how this is done or what's involved. Please let me know if someone has experience doing this and what's involved. I also do not want to do anything to damage my rankings in Google for SITE A. I'm not sure how Google sees this type of modification. I want to avoide duplicate content penalties.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Chris

[Razasharp]

Yes it would be seen as duplicate content.

Also, the content from site A onto site B would just be a 'snapshot' and any new posts etc would not be seen on site B once the 'snapshot' had been loaded into site b...

[cmeinck]

Couldn't I just set up a robots.txt on SITE B to disallow /forum


Also, the content from site A onto site B would just be a 'snapshot' and any new posts etc would not be seen on site B once the 'snapshot' had been loaded into site b...

So, you couldn't run both URL's having them affect one database for content.

[Razasharp]

You could simply duplicate the contents of the config file for both sites and if they are on the same server that could work, although I'm not sure what side effects you might get!!

Why not do this instead:

Create a new style for site b

when people go to site b and press the forum link, it contains the style ID for site B so when they go to it they think they are still on site B!(but its site As forum really with just a different style). Make sure the header for the style for site B points all links as relevant to site Bs :)

[PennylessZ28]

I do not agree with the information in this post.

If you wanted to setup a forum to use information from another forum, such as users/pms/post/threads but everything else be seperate you would install to vbulletin forums into the same database

you would use database prefixes for eample databaseB_forums databaseA_forums

Do make them share the same information you would then remove prefixs for certain tables so that it both forums are using the same table for the user for example.

This is what was being mentioned on vbulletin.org

This would allow you to have to completely different sites while allowing the same users to log into both sites and read the same pm's and have the same profile info.

If you had a general chat room, you could fill that room with the same content on both forums.

[Evil X]

lol widgets?...

[Razasharp]

I do not agree with the information in this post.

If you wanted to setup a forum to use information from another forum, such as users/pms/post/threads but everything else be seperate you would install to vbulletin forums into the same database

you would use database prefixes for eample databaseB_forums databaseA_forums

Do make them share the same information you would then remove prefixs for certain tables so that it both forums are using the same table for the user for example.

This is what was being mentioned on vbulletin.org

This would allow you to have to completely different sites while allowing the same users to log into both sites and read the same pm's and have the same profile info.

If you had a general chat room, you could fill that room with the same content on both forums.

Yep sounds much better :)

[cmeinck]

This would allow you to have to completely different sites while allowing the same users to log into both sites and read the same pm's and have the same profile info.

If they post to a thread would it appear on both sites?

Basically, I'm trying accomplish this:

Visitors can login to either Site A or Site B
Visitors would see a different style/template depending on which site they visited
The visitors browser would display www.sitea.com/forum if they came through site a
Visitor would see www.siteb.com/forum if they came through Site B
Content posted on either SITE A or SITE B would appear on both
To avoid a Google duplicate content penalty, I'd use robots.txt to disallow siteb.com/forum


The overarching goal is to "not redirect to another site - SITE A in this case", but utilize my existing community to avoid having to build a similar community on SITE B. Plus, all of my traffic building efforts on SITE B will help the forums on SITE A.

lol widgets?...

Sorry, probably overused..I certainly thought so during my collegiate years. Somewhere a college professor is happy.