Have VBADVANCED or not?

[raiderlax]

1. Hello everyone I am starting up a new forum and I was wondering whether or not I should have vbadvanced installed on it? is vbadvanced good to have as the sites index... like do members/guests like it from experience???

2. As well my other question is is whether I should install the vbulletin software under the root domain or if I should install it under /forum ... What is better? for SEO purposes? etc...

Thanks

[Awjvail]

IMO, it just adds extra weight to the forum and makes it more work for you.
i don't think it's necessary.

[raiderlax]

Okay thanks, what about my second question?

1. Yes, because it adds a dynamic to your site and gives you flexibility to make it more than just a forum if you want to go that route. I run vBA here, to give you an idea:

http://www.sevenstring.org

(guest/guest to remove the ads)

2. It makes no difference for SEO if it's in /forum or not, just make sure you read up on SEO and take measures to improve it. There are a LOT of tweaks and fixes for vB to make it more SEO friendly, as well as server-side, such as a proper robots.txt for starters. I use vBSEO and I'm extremely satisfied with it and think it's well worth the price, but depending on your budget, there are a lot of mods here that do bits and pieces of what vBSEO offers as a whole. If you are serious about SEO though, I'd really go for vBSEO out of the gate.

.2c, good luck.

[raiderlax]

Originally Posted by Chris-777

1. Yes, because it adds a dynamic to your site and gives you flexibility to make it more than just a forum if you want to go that route. I run vBA here, to give you an idea:

http://www.sevenstring.org

(guest/guest to remove the ads)

2. It makes no difference for SEO if it's in /forum or not, just make sure you read up on SEO and take measures to improve it. There are a LOT of tweaks and fixes for vB to make it more SEO friendly, as well as server-side, such as a proper robots.txt for starters. I use vBSEO and I'm extremely satisfied with it and think it's well worth the price, but depending on your budget, there are a lot of mods here that do bits and pieces of what vBSEO offers as a whole. If you are serious about SEO though, I'd really go for vBSEO out of the gate.

.2c, good luck.

Cool thanks a lot for your response Your site looks sweet with VBA...

So overall I think it may be best to install the forum under /forum because just in case in the future I would want to make an actual site, than I can do that... I think it would be much easier that way as well your saying it doesn't affect SEO if you have it under /forum so that is really good too.

As a matter of fact I have vBSEO for one of my sites and love it!

1. My really important question is is that if I do install the forum under /forum of the domain (which looks to be the best place to install it for the future) what would be the best way to forward the domain to /forum because if you go to www.domain.com for example and the forum is under /forum it will show a blank page am I right... so how would you make it so that if someone types in www.domain.com it goes to your forum????... but also how do you make it setup so that in the future if you didn't want it to forward to your /forum and wanted to make a site for the domain you could???

Thanks

[raiderlax]

anyone please?

[RobDog888]

Use an .htaccess file in your root directory to rewrite the url to add /forum.

Something like this I think it is...

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/forums/$1