Invision Community 4: SEO, prepare for v5 and dormant account notifications By Matt Monday at 02:04 PM
Washerhelp Posted February 20, 2023 Posted February 20, 2023 Hi. My forums are in a /forums folder. But my homepage URL goes to a WordPress page. I originally intended to build a WordPress site alongside the forums. But I never did. So now I have an entire WordPress installation, with several plug-ins all set up just to essentially run a single home page that has links to the forums. I would like to get rid of the WordPress installation. I've considered moving the forums over to the root, but it seems fraught with potential problems and issues, including things like having to divert thousands of topics URLs and potential Seo impact? Is it possible to delete my WordPress installation, and leave all my forums and topic's inside the forums folder, and create a home page and about me page inside Invision - but have them in the root folder? So all of my topics will remain, www.mysite.co.uk/forums/this-is-the-topic/ but my www.mysite.co.uk/ would go to an Invision page?
Meddysong Posted February 20, 2023 Posted February 20, 2023 You could purchase the Pages app to create your basic home page, and move your Invision Community installation to the site root. By selecting Pages as your default app (you can do this after installation), site.co.uk would be the IC installation, and the other apps would be located at site.co.uk/forums, /gallery, etc. Doing it this way, your links would still be entirely valid even though you will have moved the installation. It'd mean an extra paid app but at least it would live within IC, using its CSS, blocks, and so on.
Washerhelp Posted February 21, 2023 Author Posted February 21, 2023 Hello there, many thanks for your reply, it sounds interesting. But I am a little confused about a few things. When you say purchase the pages app, is that different from the pages section that I already have in my Invision dashboard? I've had the pages section for as long as I can remember, though I don't remember buying it separately. Also, I was looking for an option that didn't involve moving all of the files from the forums folder. Is there no way I could just create a page and have that appear when someone goes to mysite.co.uk whilst keeping everything else where it is? Am I even overthinking all this? Would it be perfectly okay for example to create a home page, which may end up inside a folder, but then simply divert mysite.co.uk/ to mysite.co.uk/pages/homepage/
opentype Posted February 21, 2023 Posted February 21, 2023 8 minutes ago, Washerhelp said: but then simply divert mysite.co.uk/ to mysite.co.uk/pages/homepage/ Yes, you can do that. You would just add a forwarding rule (301/permanently moved) to your htaccess file in the root directory.
CheersnGears Posted March 10, 2023 Posted March 10, 2023 (edited) On 2/20/2023 at 8:44 AM, Washerhelp said: Hi. My forums are in a /forums folder. But my homepage URL goes to a WordPress page. I originally intended to build a WordPress site alongside the forums. But I never did. So now I have an entire WordPress installation, with several plug-ins all set up just to essentially run a single home page that has links to the forums. I would like to get rid of the WordPress installation. I've considered moving the forums over to the root, but it seems fraught with potential problems and issues, including things like having to divert thousands of topics URLs and potential Seo impact? Is it possible to delete my WordPress installation, and leave all my forums and topic's inside the forums folder, and create a home page and about me page inside Invision - but have them in the root folder? So all of my topics will remain, www.mysite.co.uk/forums/this-is-the-topic/ but my www.mysite.co.uk/ would go to an Invision page? What you want to do is 1. Activate Pages and build your initial basic home page. This will put the url at something like mysite.co.uk/forums/articles(or)pages. Stay at this step until you're happy with what appears when you visit this URL. It will be your new homepage. Probably buy one of @opentype's excellent article and page template plug-ins if you intend to write articles. 2. Go into your file manager and move your entire IPS install + all subfolders down to the root folder for your domain (remove wordpress first!!!). This means everyting currently in your public_html/mysite.co.uk/forums/ folder needs to go to public_html/mysite.co.uk/ 3. Log into your IPS ACP and set Pages as the default app. Pages will now reside at mysite.co.uk, and your forums will reside at mysite.co.uk/forums. 4. Celebrate Edited March 10, 2023 by CheersnGears Marc and Washerhelp 1 1
Randy Calvert Posted March 10, 2023 Posted March 10, 2023 I believe you’ll also need to update your conf_global.php to reflect the change there as well to the board URL. Washerhelp 1
CheersnGears Posted March 10, 2023 Posted March 10, 2023 11 minutes ago, Randy Calvert said: I believe you’ll also need to update your conf_global.php to reflect the change there as well to the board URL. This is correct... a step that I had forgotten. This should be done immediately after you complete step 2. $INFO['board_url'] = 'https://mysite.co.uk/forums'; to $INFO['board_url'] = 'https://mysite.co.uk/'; Randy Calvert and Washerhelp 1 1
Washerhelp Posted March 11, 2023 Author Posted March 11, 2023 15 hours ago, CheersnGears said: 3. Log into your IPS ACP and set Pages as the default app. Pages will now reside at mysite.co.uk, and your forums will reside at mysite.co.uk/forums. Many thanks to you both. I hadn't got around to dealing with this yet, but this seems like an ideal solution. The only thing that puzzles me, is moving everything in the /forms/ folder to root, and therefore deleting the forums folder. My current URLs are - www.mysite.co.uk/forums/topic/this-is-a-topic/ Would the change in the config_global.php file rewrite all my urls so there would be no impact on SEO?
opentype Posted March 11, 2023 Posted March 11, 2023 If your physical folder was “/forums/”, I think you are lucky, because that will also be the default forums folder once you make Pages the default app. So, everything in the forums should continue to work as always. Washerhelp 1
CheersnGears Posted March 11, 2023 Posted March 11, 2023 2 hours ago, Washerhelp said: Many thanks to you both. I hadn't got around to dealing with this yet, but this seems like an ideal solution. The only thing that puzzles me, is moving everything in the /forms/ folder to root, and therefore deleting the forums folder. My current URLs are - www.mysite.co.uk/forums/topic/this-is-a-topic/ Would the change in the config_global.php file rewrite all my urls so there would be no impact on SEO? Yes, when you're done, your forums will have the same URL they do now. Washerhelp 1
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