XF 2.2 Question about splash page created during initial forum setup

A

ancientdad

Member
Please forgive my ignorance if this is in the wrong place or has already been discussed, I did an hour or more of searching for something like it already but I'm a luddite when it comes to the back end of our forum software and afraid to do something that will brick my forum.

We started with vB 4.5 years ago and upgraded to Xenforo a year ago last August (it's SO much better). The member who helped with the initial setup added a splash page with our logo that timed out after about 8 seconds and then redirected to the main forum page. I now realize from some research that it could be causing our search results to be less than we'd like, so I'd like to either eliminate it or reduce the time out to 1 to 2 seconds, whichever is considered best. I believe I found the file in our server CP to make the change but I'm afraid to attempt it, and I'm not sure exactly how to do it anyway. I have a couple of screenshots but I'm unsure if I should post them publicly. Again, apologies for my lack of knowledge, I'm retired and my field of expertise in my working life was mechanical (vintage motorcycle forum). I'm happy to provide anything asked for to help someone guide me through what to do.

Thanks in advance.
 
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You would probably need to provide a link to your forum to get the correct steps needed. However I would consider reverting your landing/splash page to the forum default.

I'm not an SEO expert so I won't comment on that but I personally wouldn't want to wait 8 seconds or even a couple of seconds to access your forum. It doesn't matter how amazing your landing page is, unless the displayed content contains a rich variety of dynamic features the majority of members will bookmark the default forum listing anyway and prospective members will be long gone before the page times out.
 
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zappaDPJ said:
I'm not an SEO expert so I won't comment on that but I personally wouldn't want to wait 8 seconds or even a couple of seconds to access your forum. It doesn't matter how amazing your landing page is, unless the displayed content contains a rich variety of dynamic features the majority of members will bookmark the default forum listing anyway and prospective members will be long gone before the page times out.
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Thanks for the insight. I did not set it up initially nor did I have the knowledge then to understand it, nor did I have the knowledge then, or now, to change it, or I would have already. I suppose it's easy to provide that kind of answer and critique above when you do actually know how, and fully understand the ramifications of it all. We all have our areas of expertise. If you ever decide to buy a vintage Honda twin motorcycle, you'd be wise to look us up because that's what we do at my forum, and we do it better than any other forum like it. But we don't act condescendingly toward noobs who come to us for advice because we remember that at one point in our lives, we were all noobs.
 
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I wasn't attempting to be condescending, apologies I came across that way.

What I'm suggesting is your forum might do better to lose the landing page rather than making an adjustment. That should prove to be the easier task depending on how it was setup but it's really not possible to offer help without knowing more about the actual setup.
 
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zappaDPJ said:
I wasn't attempting to be condescending, apologies I came across that way.
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Thanks. When you're in my position of retired and age 70, despite 25 years of association with Windows computers and actually making a living repairing them and even building a few webpages 10 to 15 years ago, the amount of change has left me behind and though I don't like to ask for help, in some cases I have to.
zappaDPJ said:
What I'm suggesting is your forum might do better to lose the landing page rather than making an adjustment.
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I agree, and I believe I now have a solution thanks to a DM I received yesterday. I hope to implement it later today with the help of a forum member who knows more than I do.
 
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philmckrackon said:
Probably an index.php file with a timed redirect. Can you post the code in the index.php file?
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Or else (and this is what I might have done) is to keep the xenforo index.php as is (I don't think it's good to mess with or change name), then make the landing page (e.g. landing-page.html) the directory root (in htaccess DirectoryIndex landing-page.html) and redirect to stock xenForo index.php

So to make it not have time lag and redirect:

From the landing page remove the bit that looks like this <meta http-equiv = "refresh" content = "8; url = https://landing-page.html" />

and remove DirectoryIndex landing-page.html from htaccess
 
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beerForo said:
The commented out line says 8 seconds, so it was 8000 at one point and if it still was you probably would have figured it out. 😉
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Unless we're talking about vintage Hondas, don't give me too much credit.

Like your username and signature, couldn't agree more.

Also, there are more emojis here than we have, I copied a few but I might need to ask how to install them in my XF. But I'll stumble around in the dark first.
 
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