Redirecting root url to sub-directory

[BozzaJos]

Hey guys and gals,

I've got a question and I am really hoping that someone can help me out. My new site is almost finished and this is the last hick-up I need to figure out before throwing the site in the air.

My old/current situation is that my site only consists of the Forums, vBulletin software of course. If you visit the root url, it goes directly to the Forums.

I've almost finished creating a new site, a frontpage instead of only a forum. The new site is located in a sub-directory. Due to the problem of having a lot of invalid links, I can't move the Forums to a sub-directory. So I will change the Forums index file to forums.php and leave the new site in the sub-dir. That means of course that if someone visits the root url, he/she should be redirected to the sub-dir.

My question is: What is the most logical way to achieve that? Best, proper way when you look at coding but SEF as well. I heard someone saying that the best way is to get .htaccess to redirect but I have no idea how. I do use the .htaccess file in the root directory and the sub-dir of the new site as well. The new site was created using the Joomla software by the way.

Can anyone help me out? It is the last step to perform before putting the site online for everyone. I know I could create a index.html/php file and use a redirect function in there but is the .htaccess file more friendly?
Unfortunately, my knowledge is very limited so I hope someone can give me the exact command(s).

Thank you in advance and if you need to know anything else, please reply as well.

Take care,

Bozza