Main site elsewhere?

[Axel Wers]

Hi, could be anyone explain how to use feature Main site elsewhere? ? Some example would be appreciated, thanks.

 

 

 

[Marc]

This changes the JSON-LD markup output on the page. If you have an external site which is the main page of your site and isnt our software (wordpress for example) you would set these

[Axel Wers]

Thanks, I thought, this is exactly what we need. We have purchased a license for the "domain.tld" website on which our non-invision site is located.

So how can it be set that there is non-invision page on domain.tld, but we want to use invision pages such as e.g. https://domain.tld/news/ or https://domain.tld/blogs/ etc. ? Is there a manual for this setting?

[Mark H]

EDIT: Apologies, I  misread what you wanted to do. Randy's answer below mine is more correct (and informative.)

 

[Randy Calvert]

5 hours ago, Axel Wers said:

Thanks, I thought, this is exactly what we need. We have purchased a license for the "domain.tld" website on which our non-invision site is located.

So how can it be set that there is non-invision page on domain.tld, but we want to use invision pages such as e.g. https://domain.tld/news/ or https://domain.tld/blogs/ etc. ? Is there a manual for this setting?

In order to do this, the software must run on the same physical server.  

So for example, you could have Wordpress installed within domain.tld/news (or just /) and IPB installed in domain.tld/forums.  Those would all be installed within the same server in the same virtual host , etc.  

If the news or blog site are on different physical servers, you would need to use subdomains.  

This is not an IPB limitation...  it's a limitation of DNS itself.  DNS says domain.tld goes to a specific server (such as www.domain.tld).  Once it's at the server, it handles all paths below it (such as /news/ or /blogs/).

Technically there are ways to work around this if you're using a CDN as a proxy...  as it could be POSSIBLY configured to go to a different origin based on path matches, but that is WAAAAAY outside of the scope of this discussion.  🙂 

[Axel Wers]

It's on the same server.

Our landing page is in /www/ directory and Community installation in /www/invison/ directory. So what sence has Main site elsewhere? in this case?

[Dll]

It doesn't, as it isn't.

[Marc]

1 hour ago, Axel Wers said:

It's on the same server.

Our landing page is in /www/ directory and Community installation in /www/invison/ directory. So what sence has Main site elsewhere? in this case?

The setting there does the same as I mentioned in my original response, regardless of situation here. You would set that if your site is elsewhere so that the JSON-LD markup output on the page shows your main site to be at a different URL. There isnt anything else that setting does

[Randy Calvert]

6 hours ago, Axel Wers said:

It's on the same server.

Our landing page is in /www/ directory and Community installation in /www/invison/ directory. So what sence has Main site elsewhere? in this case?

If your main site is www.domain.com and IPB is installed in www.domain.com/invision… clicking the home button in the bread crumbs for example would lead you back to domain.com/invision because that is the default “root” where it was installed. 

This lets you change domain.com/invision to just www.domain.com for those links. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. It does not move your data or change settings on the server itself. 

[Marc]

52 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

If your main site is www.domain.com and IPB is installed in www.domain.com/invision… clicking the home button in the bread crumbs for example would lead you back to domain.com/invision because that is the default “root” where it was installed. 

This lets you change domain.com/invision to just www.domain.com for those links. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. It does not move your data or change settings on the server itself. 

Actually it wouldnt change those either. It's the JSON-LD markup only

[Randy Calvert]

oops...  my bad.  😄 Learn something new every day.

[Marc]

8 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said:

oops...  my bad.  😄 Learn something new every day.

Not often you're incorrect, I'll give you that 😉 

[Washerhelp]

Hi. My main site is "www.siteONE" and is run with WordPress. My forums are on www.siteTwo.

My forums have an independent home page, but the forums are essentially a subsidiary of siteONE. In other words, everything I do is on siteONE, but forums are on siteTWO and both link very heavily between each other. The only reason it is this way is that the forums came first, and it doesn't seem possible to move them over to siteONE without losing URLs and SEO.

Is this "Main site elsewhere?" setting relevant or am I overthinking it?

Andy

 

[Marc]

When you say move to site one, what do you mean? Are you referring to changing its URL? If so, you can add redirects from your old URL to account for that

[Washerhelp]

Hi Marc, many thanks. Yes, I remember some years back asking technical support about it, and they said it wasn't possible to move forums to a different URL without breaking all the links. I was looking into moving www.SiteTWO/forums/articles/ to www.SiteONE/forums/articles/

SiteTwo has been running for 23 years, SiteONE has been running for 16.

[Randy Calvert]

You would need to have something that redirects old links.  The software itself does not have a tool to change any old posted content to reflect any links posted by users, etc.  

It WOULD fix all new links and the links generated by the software itself automatically.  But it would not fix old articles, etc.  

[Washerhelp]

Thank you randy. It sounds more trouble than it's worth. So regarding my original question, related to this specific topic, in my situation would it be beneficial to fill in the "main site elsewhere?" Section?

[Randy Calvert]

The only thing that setting will do is change the JSON-LD data to say the site's root is not your forum itself.  It helps Google know that www.domain.com/forum is not the "root" of the site.  

To learn more about what JSON-LD is, check out:

https://moz.com/blog/json-ld-for-beginners

But I don't think it's going to be relevant to what you are wanting to do.  

[Marc]

Its indeed not really relevant to what you are asking there.

Redirection from one domain to another shouldnt actually be that big a task by the way. If you ask your hosting company, thats something they are likely to be able to do for you quite easily