htaccess

I used to know how to do this but because i do it very rarely.

i have my site and ive installed some forums. which i installed under sitename.com/forums because the site has been like that for a while i dont want to change the directory so its under sitename.com because it has all ben idexed now.

So what i want is when someone type in sitename.com it really goes to sitename.com/forums/homepage.html

I hope that makes sense.

 

Add this line to the htaccess
Redirect 301 /forum http://www.sitename.com

Then move your forum into the homepage directory. The search engines will learn the change of address in a search engine friendly way.
Or at least that's my understanding of it!

 

RewriteEngine on
Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.mydomain.info/folder

Something like this. Don\ t remember accurately. Try.

EDIT: Yes, chops is right. In the long run, if you want the forum to be in the root his suggestion is best.

 

im not bothered about the forums being in the root directory i just want the site to load up sitename.com/forums/homepage.html first in the easiest possible way

 

Hehe, some one with 4 greens gave me a red AND a happy smiley in this thread. Funny.

 

Is it possible to use htaccess to load up www.mysite.com/forums/homepage.html as the homepage?

So for instance i i type in www.mysite.com or mysite.com it loads the above page up first.

 

There are a number of ways to do this:
1) mod_rewrite, placed in a .htaccess file in the root folder of your domain (mysite.com/.htaccess)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ http://www.mysite.com/forums/homepage.html [R=301,L]

Code (markup):

2) mod_alias - using Redirect commands as suggested above.

3) Use an index script that sends out the redirect header - as you're only wanting to redirect one page, this option would make most sense to me. Depends on what you have available but with PHP you could simply create an index.php file at mysite.com/index.php and put inside:

<?php
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: http://www.mysite.com/forums/homepage.html'); 
?>

PHP:

 

its also my PR, my homepage has an ok PR and i want that to be transfered to mysite.com/forums/newhomepage not transferred but for it to appear as though the new homepage has the PR

 

When you redirect 301, the PR will also be redirected. So if you redirect domain.com with PR3 to domain.com/forum, the forum will be PR3 in the future.

 

Id rather it just be when i type in www.mysite.com it displays mysite.com/forums/homepage there was a different script i used id probably know it if i seen it

 

I do not understand what you want.
For mysite.com to display the content of mysite.com/forums/homepage you have to move all the files, but that is not what you want right ?
You can also iframe mysite.com/forums/homepage and display it on mysite.com, but that would be strange to do ?
You do not want that when somebody types domain.com they are send to mysite.com/forums/homepage , right ?