Xenforo in a subfolder or subdomain, what to recommend?

[Miri]

What is the best advice regarding the installation of a forum, is it preferable to place it in a subfolder of the main site or in the root of a subdomain?

 

[bzcomputers]

What else are you going to have on the domain? If not much, than you should definitely go with subdirectory. Otherwise your main domain will not have much content and search engine ranking.

Google looks at subdomains as separate websites and differentiates between them when it comes to indexing, ranking, and other aspects of SEO.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I agree, for SEO if you want them to be integrated for the purposes of Search engines, folder is probably better in many cases. But depends on whether they both have quality content.

 

[Miri]

What else are you going to have on the domain? If not much, than you should definitely go with subdirectory. Otherwise your main domain will not have much content and search engine ranking.

Google looks at subdomains as separate websites and differentiates between them when it comes to indexing, ranking, and other aspects of SEO.

Certainly, considering the high quality of the site I aim to use Xenforo exclusively for the forum while managing other content through specific CMS. I am fully aware that this entails managing a separate domain.

I agree, for SEO if you want them to be integrated for the purposes of Search engines, folder is probably better in many cases. But depends on whether they both have quality content.

From an seo perspective, opting for a subfolder would be ideal, however, I question the usability aspect. Users navigating from the cms to the forum in the subfolder expect a cohesive design and a unified login system.

Choosing a subdomain, on the other hand, keeps the forum site distinct, which might make the users' transition between sections of the site more acceptable. This approach also offers development advantages, such as the ability to use different php versions in case some addons are not fully compatible, etc.

 

[briansol]

subdomain for a different 'product'.

eg,
mail.google.com is a mail product, not a search product

if your forum 'supports' your cms/content, folder wins.

 

[Chris D]

If there's ever a chance that you might move either the CMS or the forum or both to a hosted platform, using a sub domain makes a lot of sense.

Sub domains can be pointed at different hosting providers with relative ease, whereas hosting in different locations across directories is a lot more complex.

For this reason we see a lot of XF Cloud customers running their forums on subdomains.

 

[Miri]

if your forum 'supports' your cms/content, folder wins.

True, although the forum will be closely related to the theme of the site, it will be used primarily for discussions. On the other hand, the CMS will already have its own user interaction system, with profiles, comments and other data, thus managing its specific interaction dynamics.

I agree with Chris that:

Sub domains can be pointed at different hosting providers with relative ease, whereas hosting in different locations across directories is a lot more complex.

in terms of management and probably also resources, a subdomain is the most effective choice. This approach would allow differences in design to be more easily managed and the separation of credentials between CMS and forum would be more "acceptable" to end users. I think choosing a subfolder in my case might complicate the integration, making the interface more confusing.

After conducting some research, I've observed that forums are installed both in subfolders and subdomains. However, it appears that the more active ones tend to favor installation in subdomains.

 

[Miri]

I'm wondering, is there a way to remove ../forum/forums... repetition in URLs? Since it is a subdomain or a subdirectory, both would be called "forum".

 

[Opus X]

I'm wondering, is there a way to remove ../forum/forums... repetition in URLs? Since it is a subdomain or a subdirectory, both would be called "forum".

I asked the guy who I purchased my site from (and runs the server for me) about this as I am more familiar with WordPress and was wanting to have a nicer landing page. He said the /forum was a built in link, but if I saw more than that, there was an issue currently since xenforo was in my home location and I had made some changes.
He said something about the /forums was a route or something and that if I wanted to put a WordPress site at my initial landing I would need to move the site (xenforo) over into another directly called something like community and it would work, but he did not have the time to do any search engine changes that I would need at the server.

 

[James]

You can create a replacement route for /forums I believe and rename it to /f/ or something.

Route filters | Manual | XenForo

End-user documentation for XenForo

xenforo.com

Example 1: Changing a Route Prefix#
The default URLs in XenForo are in English. You may wish to change these to be in your preferred language. For example, in Spanish, "forums" is "foros". To setup a route filter to do this you would enter:

Find route: forums/
Replace with: foros/
This will automatically match all URLs within the forums route prefix, such as forums/example.1/ which would become foros/example.1/

As another example, you may have our Resource Manager add-on installed and you prefer to call it Downloads. You could simply change resources/ to downloads/

 

[Opus X]

You can create a replacement route for /forums I believe and rename it to /f/ or something.

From what I understood from what my friend told me, /forum/forums could not be replaced by a route? He specifically said if I wanted to use WoredPress (which I am familiar with) and put the forum under it, I really needed to use a subdirectory other than forum (he recommended community or discussions).

 

[simoncmchan]

so in xenforo, can we change https://forum.xxx.com/forums/xxxxx to https://forum.xxx.com/f/xxxx

since i also want to use subdirectory method.

main site is wordpress. eg: https://xxx.com/
xenforo site now is https://forum.xxx.com

we want to move to main site subdirectory, https://xxx.com/forum/
(ps: using nginx proxy_pass)

if it is, xenforo has url like https://forum.xxx.com/forums/xxxxx.
do u think can change these kinds url to https://forum.xxx.com/f/xxxx ?

since is ugly if it is https://xxx.com/forum/forums/xxxxxx

Regards

 

[Jeremy P]

You can use a route filter to change forums/ to f/.

 

[Suzanne O]

Voted for Subdomain because then you can do a lot more to your domain name.

 

[James]

@simoncmchan See it in action here:
https://728f68947c11a585.demo-xenforo.com/2215/f/main-forum.2/
How-to:

 

[simoncmchan]

ok, thx.
just try and it works.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Users navigating from the cms to the forum in the subfolder expect a cohesive design and a unified login system.

Use XenPorta or bob’s articles for the CMS.

I think the new OAuth stuff will make xenforo Wordpress login integration more robust but there always seems to be “gotchas” like Wordpress cache things break the integration or break the caching.

Xenforo should dogfood and release a Home tab.

 

[Miri]

XenPortal does not, for various reasons. Ok Bob's addon and this would be the only and best solution if it weren't for the fact that, I'm planning to use a CMS as I also have other plugins for other solutions. And I would use XenForo just for the forum. I agree that integrating XF with other systems will always bring problems, and at least you are not a programmer and know where to put your hands when needed, otherwise it is better to never do the integration. And perhaps this is also why I feel strongly about keeping it separate, not integrated and in a subdomain.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I'm planning to use a CMS

Which one ?

 

[Miri]

Which one ?

Joomla