for over a decade i have always installed my forums at /forum when going to 4 is there any pros or cons to installing the suite at the root ?

My personal preference is root, or it only lengthens the url, such as /forum/forum on some urls if you use a folder, which looks bad imo.   So I always do the root domain on mine. I think it's just preference, I don't see any impact on anything other than looks of the url though. 

Thanks Rett - i may give that a try when i go 4 - what happens if people have book marks or keep a list of favorite links - will it naturally redirect?

 

Actually it can be problematic, due to the forum itself using the /forum in it's stock urls, so you can't redirect /forum to / or it breaks it, at least in 3.4.x, I haven't tested this yet in IPS4, however I assume it would do the same.    Now if you used /forums prior, then you can redirect /forums and retain all links to /  but not /forum I'm afraid. 

 

 

My preference is the root too or if that is not possible consider a subdomain ie: something.site.com rather than a subfolder. This also avoids the 'issue' with duplicated /forum in the URL too in most cases.

Agreed with @Rhett and @AndyF. Only reason to avoid root is if you have another system there that could interact with IPS badly.

for 3.4.x I used sub domain of community and left the root for other things (e.g. if wanting a static web page or for IP.Content)

Not sure how this will work with IPB 4 though