XF 1.4 Help regarding url structure

[PhobiaForum]

I think I made an error when I set my site up as the forum comes off the main home page under a directory called "forum". So when I go to the actual forum and look at a sub-forum the url is www.phobiasupportforum.com/forum/forums........

Example:-

http://phobiasupportforum.com/forum/forums/say-hello-and-tell-us-your-story.4/

It is not really an issue for threads but I would like to change the "forums" reference to something different. I was wondering:-

Is this possible?

Would I invalidate any third party links to the forum under the current url structure if I change it?

The site has not really been launched yet so it would not be the end of the world if the new structure for the sub-forums was something like forum/sections.

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,


Mark

 

[Paul B]

If you don't want to or are unable to install in the root (due to other software being installed there), you have two options.

1. Rename the /forum directory XF is installed in, to something like /community, which would give you domain.com/community/forums.
2. Use a Route Filter (https://xenforo.com/help/route-filters/) to change the /forums route, which would result in domain.com/forum/something.

 

[PhobiaForum]

I presume if I change the name of the directory which has the XF code then Google and the other search engines would pick up on the new url structure fairly quickly and relist forum pages under the new url?

I think community/forum looks better - what do you think?

 

[James]

I presume if I change the name of the directory which has the XF code then Google and the other search engines would pick up on the new url structure fairly quickly and relist forum pages under the new url?

I think community/forum looks better - what do you think?

Just changing the directory wouldn't be enough you'd need to put 301 redirects in place via .htaccess.

 

[Paul B]

The site has not really been launched yet

Is it open to guests and therefore Google?

If not, there is no need to implement redirects as none of the content will have been indexed.

If indexing has taken place, you can either implement redirects or just take the hit and Google will eventually update the URLs.

 

[PhobiaForum]

Thanks for your advice - I have changed the directory housing the XF code to community and as the forum is not really busy yet I will just take the short term hit until Google catches up with the new URL structure. This should n't take too long should it?

 

[Paul B]

No, it shouldn't take too long.

I believe you can log in to GWT and set a higher crawl rate and possibly even remove invalid URLs.

 

[PhobiaForum]

Thats it done now - didn't bother with the redirect as there is already one there for wordpress so might confuse things. I would guess no more than a week or so for Google to re-index?

 

[James]

Use your Google webmaster tools and submit your url and fetch as Google. Then you click URL and all linked pages and it should speed up the reindexing.