root question
 

I didn't have any luck installing vb into my root directory so it resides at root/public_html/forums so my url is www.example.com/forums/index Will this effect how Google bot searches my web site. i am not having any luck with it, iam getting 404 errors. Should i place a robots.txt inside the public_html folder or forums folder along with my Google.html tag? or should they be it the root folder. thanks in advance.

Google will find it regardless of path. robots.txt can go in root, but it won't hurt to copy it all over if you want.

You wont be able to install vB effectively in the "root" directory, since you won't be able to access it without it being in your "public_html" directory...

Chris

the webroot directory is /public_html/ ... and you can always install vBulletin within that directory without the /forum{s}/ path... there is no hardcoded way of doing it... there is no pre-configuration that force you to use the /forum{s}/ path in vBulletin...

should i use a Sitemap Generator or will a robot.txt be enough. everything else seems to be working fine, Google doesn't do anything when it crawls my site. its been two weeks 17 visits but no data is taken from the visit.

in the Google Webmaster Central you can decide what is the path google have to follow to visit your site...

we can't do more here if you do not read the documentation at Google...