The most visited section of one of my sites is the forum. It is /board. Most users just go directly to the forum and bypass the main page. Is there a way so that if they type in www.sitenamehere.com/board it will just go to www.sitenamehere.com and they will have to click the forum link to access for forum?
Not exactly dealing with your how to question, but asking back, why would you? Is there compelling reason for your visitors to, in their minds, waste time going through a page they don't care about? It has been pretty well established that visitors stop coming to sites that make it difficult to do whatever it is they want to do. Forcing them to suffer through one page to get to another is just plain goofy if you want them to keep returning. One method that comes to mind is to check the referer variable, and if it isn't the splash page, redirect'em. Of course, anyone with the referer header disabled on his browser, or has disabled cookies (you'll need them), or a search engine, will never be able to reach the forum. cheers, gary
Hi, I built a website that only uses PHP $_POST commands like from forms except I use a javascript command to submit the form. You can use something like this maybe. Here is a small example: <Form method="post" name="loadforum" action="checkloadforum.php"> <input type="hidden" value="enterforum" name="enterforum"> </form> <A HREF="javasctipt: document.loadforum.submit()">Forum</a> checkloadforum.php would have in it: <? if (!isset($_POST['enterforum'])) { header("location: http://www.sitename.com"); } else { header("location: http://www.sitename.com/forum"); } ?> You could put: <? include('checkloadforum.php') ?> at the top of the main file of your forum. Usually index.php Let me know if this is what you need. Mike
I also don't see why you would want to do that. It will only annoy your visitors. If they want to go directly to your forums then let them.
This will only be a temporary thing. The site has been up for over a year, but I have just recently put a main page up that has lots of useful information. The visitors that I have to my site are VERY loyal. Most of the time they just type the direct address to the forum and most don't/didn't even notice the new main page. My visitors will not leave the site because they are directed the the main page first.
I'm a bit confused by this but interested, wouldn't the below example happen if you do this? e.g. User types in www.sitename.com/board and gets sent to www.sitename.com if they then click the forum link from the main page www.sitename.com/board (i'm assuming this would be the link again) then they would get sent back to www.sitename.com If you get what I mean?? In theory it would be impossible for them to get to the forum I may have picked it up wrong but I think not.
If you set up a redirect in like cpanel or something it will do that, i just want it so if they go directly to www.sitename.com/board it will direct to www.sitename.com. so yes, it will need some type of referral id i'm assuming. I dont want direct requests to the forum. And this only will be in place for no more than a month, maybe only a week or so.
Can't you just make a post on the forum saying that there's new stuff on the main page instead of - in a sense - forcing them there?
Many users of the forum only use certain sections of the forum. So I would have to go into each section and make a post about it.
Go into your template, and right under the banner or whatever, add your message with a link to the entry page. The message will show up on every forum automagically. When you've done with it, remove it from the template. cheers, gary
It seems you believe you have great stuff for your existing forum visitors, but they may not agreee. If they have subscribed to a newsletter offering, I would suggest emailing that you have redesigned the site and suggest they come back and visit. If I set a bookmark to a particular page, I wouldn't be too happy to be redirected elsewhere. And as you said, it would take a lot of time to post a message in the different forum sections. But it seems that if what you have to offer is so important, you would take that time instead of annoying the current visitors.
That still requires users to click on the link. 90% of the users wouldn't notice a link or sentence added to the top of the forum. I assure you that the visitors will not be turned off by a redirect for a week or so. Also, over 75% of the users know me personally, so IF they do have a problem with the feature, they really will not hesitate to tell me.
Judd, what everyone is trying to tell you is that you will piss off your visitors if you take control of their browser out of their hands. If they are, indeed, personally known to you and vice versa, call them on the 'phone and tell them personally. Believe me on another point, too. There is no way your changes are as important to them as they are to you. Offer the link, and those that care will check it out. The others won't. gary
Hi, The fact that this guy wants this feature on his website is really his business/problem. Why flame him for an idea ahe has about his own website? To Fisher42uk: The above example uses POST from a form. The !isset is a php function that lets that line of code know whether or now the form was clicked and will allow you to pass that line of code if it was. He would have to change the forum a bit but it was just a quick example. However, Judd uses CMS some control panel that I am not familiar with. I'm assuming it's something like myspace but at register.com or something where he can not enter code into a webpage, but instead only use premade templates or whatever. I did something similar like this to PHPBB on one of my sites, but I have full FTP access and I don't use templates. I would suggest just making a post in the forum with a link to the homepage explaining when it was updated and what's on it. If people are interested they will go there. Mike
This is what I did. I put a little post in the Announcements section and then I added a note in my signature. I put a hotlink in my signature on the board to let people know there is more to the site and to please visit the main page.. etc. My site is still small right now, so I don't have any worries about notifying everyone.
Ok, problem solved. Since this is only gonna be a temporary change, here it goes. We renamed /board to /board2 We made /board redirect to the main page. We changed the link to the forum on the main page to reflect the new location. It has been a great success. All of the features that I wanted the users to see were/have been an instant hit When we get ready to switch back, we will change /board2 back to /board, and redirect /board2 back to the main page. Hope that all makes since to you guys. LOL
Yeah, I had it changed for about a week and got TONS of compliments on the new main page. Traffic was actually UP. So to everyone that didn't try to offer help and just criticized and said it would hurt the site, try again.