[fastforward]

Originally posted by SpiceGirl
ok, one final time please? can someone post the EXACT steps? of course, only putting some code in the .htaccess (the rewriteEngine stuff) wont do jack. we need to edit our .php files as well, right?

so which ones to edit? where? how?

thanks in advance!

Here's the steps:

1. Edit httpd.conf and use Eva2000's latest rules: ie.
   

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)/?$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]
   RewriteRule ^/f([0-9]+)/s?$ /forumdisplay.php?forumid=$1 [L]
   RewriteRule ^/t([0-9]+)\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1 [L]
   RewriteRule ^/t([0-9]+)/s([^/]?)\.html$ /showthread.php?threadid=$1&s=$2 [L]
   RewriteRule ^/s([^/\?]0-9)+/$ /index.php?s=$1 [L]

2. Add the following line to your 'Head Insert' template:

   <base href="$bburl">

3. Edit the following templates:
   forumdisplay_forumbit_level1_nopost
   forumdisplay_forumbit_level1_post
   forumdisplay_forumbit_level2_nopost
   forumdisplay_forumbit_level2_post
   forumhome_forumbit_level1_nopost
   forumhome_forumbit_level1_post
   forumhome_forumbit_level2_nopost
   forumhome_forumbit_level2_post
   

   Change the links to look like this:
   <a href="$bburl/f$forum[forumid]/s$session[sessionhash]">$forum[title]</a>

4. Edit the following template:
   forumdisplaybit
   

   Change the links to look like this:
   <a href="$bburl/t$thread[threadid]/s$session[sessionhash].html">$thread[title]</a>

If you have problems with missing images in Netscape, you should go though all templates and edit the links to images to include the full path, ie' $bburl/{images_folder}/a.gif. You can use the template search function for this.

This will spider the first page of all threads only. In most cases, this should be more than enough. It is possible to add support for multipage threads, but this requires editing the code and it will probably change from version to version of vB. If you really need this, there are posts in this thread that discuss it.

I personally use the basic method. It's given me 71,800 entries in Googe for dbforums.com and 47,500 for britishexpats.com.