Redirect question?

[HellRZR]

Question for you...

I installed my CMS and Forums in domain/forums as indicated in the instructions.

When I am ready to go live with my website, should I do a redirect via webhost control panel, example domain.com to domain.com/forums or is there a more efficient way?

Would this method of redirect affect SEO?

Sorry for the newbie type question...

[TomorrowsGaming]

Generally we would avoid doing the redirect unless it is absolutely necessary. So I'd suggest you rather move your vBulletin installation to your /public_html root, saying from experience having the vBulletin in root and using the main domain seems to yield better seo results that redirecting this, sub domain that.

Anyway, back to the redirection, I guess you you like, you could use a simple 301 redirect using .htaccess since thats a good way of preserving your current Search Engine rankings..

Something like this should do it....

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourwebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

[HellRZR]

Thank-you for the response, is it a complicated process moving the installation to the root?

[TomorrowsGaming]

Not at all, its a easy process, but requires some attention.

Lets say, the way you have your vBulletin setup now is inside a sub-directory named ‘forums’.
Now in an ideal world when you are using the vB Suite you need it in the root, (unless you run a different front end.) So, yes you could just move it in to the root, but be careful because you are dealing with vB4 and caching.

Now most people over at vBulletin support will tell you this:
1. Change your vbulletin boards address from 'youroldwebsite.com' to 'yournewwebsiteurl.com' in the Admin CP.
2. Go to cPanel and Copy / Paste the files inside the 'youroldwebsite' folder to root.


But, What vBulletin support most of the time will fail to inform you is about the datastore or cookie path which will stop you from logging in if you did just do what they said.

This cookie issue will prevent you logging in to vBulletin – So once that happens, The easiest way, is to use the tools.php that came with your vBulletin zip and upload it to your admincp directory and run it, it will ask for your customer number for authentication but after this you will see a screen come up with all the current data in your database, including the cookie path, click Reset to fix the login issue. Then remove the tools.php file for security reasons.

You may be okay from here, but in most cases the paths to attachment directories require a manual database edit..

Good Luck..

[HellRZR]

actually my VBsuite is in my forums directory not the root, I saw this over on vbulletin.com, you think this would be a good alternative?

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/conte...n-subdirectory

[TomorrowsGaming]

I am not really sure what you are wanting to do, but if your entire vB suit is in the forums directory then you could just follow the above post and move it to the root if you wanted.

However, You could follow that article you mentioned aswell ("How to install CMS in Root, Forums in subdirectory"). But to be honest I wouldn't do that if I were you. Better keep things simple for the long run. I'm sure there are other ways you could achieve the main CMS Homepage on (http://www.site.com ) and your forums in /forums (http://www.site.com/forums/) if thats what you wanted.

But either way, it should work, totally up to you

[HellRZR]

Originally Posted by TomorrowsGaming

Better keep things simple for the long run. I'm sure there are other ways you could achieve the main CMS Homepage on (http://www.site.com ) and your forums in /forums (http://www.site.com/forums/) if thats what you wanted.

This is exactly want I want to do, however all my searches only point to the article I showed you, I cant find another solution.

Again I truly appreciate the help, thank-you.