Using Archive script in different location?

[Ingenious]

Hi everyone, I was directed here after filling in a support ticket on VBulletin.com.

I run a forum that is protected by a .htaccess/.htpasswd barrier as it is for paying members only. However I would really like to make the Archive (text only) pages available outside of the member area for search engines to spider. Ideally I would also like to restrict the Archive's output to three months or older, so non-members cannot use it as a back door to see current discussions. And, re-order it so it shows newer posts first.

The problem is, the archive.php script needs to run in a different directory (above the forum/ directory) and NOT require any files such as config.php from the forum/ directory, as access would be denied to spiders and guests.

Can this be done? In summary...

1. How can I run the archive script elsewhere or is it not possible? Can it be run as a standalone script not requiring access to the main config file which is in a protected directory?
2. Can the posts listed be limited to a certain age and re-ordered?

Are there any other alternative scripts available that dump forum content to .html files and which also do NOT require access to any files in the forum/ directory (ie. you set up database details in the script itself)?

(The long winded solution I know is a duplicate install in a non protected directory, and then delete all files apart from the archive/ file and the config, and then back up my main forum from time to time and use that database dump as the database source).

Any ideas or suggestions welcomed, thank you for reading.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

I doubt using the archive.php will lead to the result you want.

- Difficult to use from different location.
- Archive is nothing more then a lightweight view of your regular forum, following all the normal permissions, and showing all the threads that would be viewable to the person viewing it (ie. guests will see all posts that they have permission to see).
- Also it sounds like you want to have pages indexeded that would not be visible to guests. Making a difference between a human and a SE spider is considered cloaking and can get you removed from the SE.