Adding XenForo as a subdirectory to my domain

a1000

Member
Hope everyone is doing well.

So I have been weighing my options to launch a forum and I have arrived at XenForo Cloud-based solution.
I have my website which on Joomla and is being run as a blog on which I mainly post tutorials and articles.
However, I want my forum to have a direct impact on my main domain where my main website is and not a subdomain.

I mean, my main website is on https://www.mywebsite.com now I want my xenforo forum to be on /forum/ at https://www.mywebsite.com/forum/

Is it a possibility with XenForo cloud? or do I have to set it up as a sub-domain?
 
My Joomla website has been there since 2018, I only need to add a forum beside my website to get more user-created content for SEO improvement and also more interaction resulting in more traffic to my main domain.
I agree, use two separate mysql databases on your server.

SEO is tricky for forums. I would not see adding a forum as a magic bullet to make Google like your site more.

I think of three main things for : Content, inbound links and engagement.

Google likes well organised focussed content with nice semantic structure. Ideally each page is a topic that would nicely answer a search query for a specific question that contains key words. It no longer works for people to just add a list of a page's key words, they need to be part of what Google sees as well written text in that page with nice headings, paragraphs etc. .

Each thread of a forum is seen as a page (or series of paginated pages) and I wish you the best of luck in ensuring your members will post in a way that Google will see as well structured semantic content. There will be bad grammar, spelling, lack of paragraphing, off topic jokes and just plain guff.

We might assume Google will take this into account as UGC - and perhaps it does because I have found many of my forum pages do get good results in Google, but that could also be helped by the number of good organic inbound links which is another important part of SEO.

You can do a certain amount of "curating" - I often change thread titles to reflect the topic better (that's what Google will use as the title in search results - very important). I often merge threads about the exact same topic. I sometimes remove or move off topic guff - but this may well upset many users.

So, while bearing all that in mind, I think a forum will be very helpful in that it may well provide a lot more engagement for visitors. And engagement is the other big SEO thing. Yes Google knows if someone went to your site and left 5 seconds later because they didn't find anything useful.
 
You should create it yourself. Just like other traditional software, Xenforo only creates tables within the database that you have previously created. If you don't remember how to create it, you could get some help from someone, at least for the initial stages.

Yes, through cPanel. You should create a database, a user with its password to associate it with the database.
 
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You should create it yourself. Just like other traditional software, Xenforo only creates tables within the database that you have previously created. If you don't remember how to create it, you could get some help from someone, at least for the initial stages.

Yes, through cPanel. You should create a database, a user with its password to associate it with the database.
I have found the SQL DB manager in Cpanel.

So thrilled with all this new XenForo stuff, going to be a great experience.

And thank you all guys, your support an attention means a lot.
 
The amazing thing about XF is it simply works. I have never had to jump through special hoops to get it to do so.
Now.... does it do everything I would like.. nope.. .Groups are a BIG missing factor for my niche in it... but there is an add-on, even though it's not up to the level I would like a group add-on to be... the author is somewhat "missing" on his support site on suggestions made.
 
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