I have a bunch of question for our new forum

[motorcycletalk]

I just started a new forum for http://www.motorcycletalk.ca. As you can see my installation is brand new. So, here come the questions.

1) How do I change the registration so it performs just like this forum?
2) How do I make my homepage, www.motorycletalk.ca the forum page. Currently it is http://www.motorcycletalk.ca/forum.php and that is not what I want.
3) I have not read this far yet, but how do I get Vbulletin to generate an xml sitemap for google and bing? What about a robots.txt file or is that something I do manually?
4) I am afraid of duplicate content and meta tag issues. How do I get a plug in for a different meta tags and different description for each page?
5) How do I get cleaner URLs or in wordpress they are called Permalinks.
6) I have three domains. www.motorcycletalk.co.uk, www.motorcycletalk.ca and www.motorcycletalk.com. I want motorcycletalk.com to be the master domain. Meaning, it will have the and control the cms and blog functionality. On the other sites, I would like to only purchase the basic forum software but tie up the blogs and links to the master website? Do I need to buy a seperate license for each url or can I use the same installation for all the urls? What would be the optimum set up here?
7) We all have been to WebHostingTalk.com. I like the way they have the main forums, but then under that they have sub forums listed on their homepage template. Is that a functionality out of the box or is that a customization I need to pay for?

I know this is quite a bit of questions so if anyone could answer, I would be very grateful. So glad to join the Vbulletin team and looking forward to your responses.

Neil
Motorcycle Talk

[Disasterpiece]

Originally Posted by motorcycletalk

1) How do I change the registration so it performs just like this forum?

Not sure what you mean, your registration seems to work well. What are you missing?

Originally Posted by motorcycletalk

2) How do I make my homepage, www.motorycletalk.ca the forum page. Currently it is http://www.motorcycletalk.ca/forum.php and that is not what I want.

You'll have to modify some of the code, I suggest to take a look at the index.php and forum.php file, there is described what changes you have to make to accomplish this.
I don't own the suite, so I can't give you further instructions on this.

Originally Posted by motorcycletalk

3) I have not read this far yet, but how do I get Vbulletin to generate an xml sitemap for google and bing? What about a robots.txt file or is that something I do manually?

See in your AdminCP: Settings > Search Engine Friendly Archive

A robot.txt isn't necessary to make it work, but you can generate a robot.txt file here: http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp

Originally Posted by motorcycletalk

5) How do I get cleaner URLs or in wordpress they are called Permalinks.

You need to upload the .htaccess files located in the do_not_upload dir from your vbulletin archive, then you navigate in your AdminCP to Settings > "Search Engine Friendly URLs"
and pick the one you prefer.
If you like to have the full customized URLs in wordpress style, you have to enable the last option.

Make sure your webserver has mod_rewrite active. To ensure it's enabled, navigate inside your admincp to "Maintenance > view PHP-Info" and search for the string "mod_rewrite". If you find it, it's enabled.

Originally Posted by motorcycletalk

6) I have three domains. www.motorcycletalk.co.uk, www.motorcycletalk.ca and www.motorcycletalk.com. I want motorcycletalk.com to be the master domain. Meaning, it will have the and control the cms and blog functionality. On the other sites, I would like to only purchase the basic forum software but tie up the blogs and links to the master website? Do I need to buy a seperate license for each url or can I use the same installation for all the urls? What would be the optimum set up here?

You need one license per domain.

However, I strongly suggest to use your master domain as a host where the vbulletin installation is located and use the other domains simply for redirection.
A simple php script with this content is sufficient for a proper redirection:

PHP Code:

<?php

header("Location: http://www.motorcycletalk.com");

?>

Save it as index.php inside the root of the other two domains, and you're done.

Or do you plan to run 3 different forums with different styles/users/content? Then you'd need to purchase a license for each domain.

Originally Posted by motorcycletalk

7) We all have been to WebHostingTalk.com. I like the way they have the main forums, but then under that they have sub forums listed on their homepage template. Is that a functionality out of the box or is that a customization I need to pay for?

It is a customized template.
However, I've seen numerous template modifications for free seen floating around here somewhere, just search for "webhostingtalk" and you might find something in the mod section.

Otherwise I suggest to create a request in the paid requests section.

[motorcycletalk]

You are amazing. Thank you so much for answering my questions.