Which would be better overall for my site's "switch"

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by DFischer, Dec 13, 2006.

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  1. #1
    I am adding a front page to http://www.writersbeat.com

    The problem is, the front page is not going to be the forums anymore.

    So if I switch the page to the new index, I have to either rename the index of the forums to => forum.php OR put all of that stuff into a new directory /forums/

    I am not sure which would be best for SEO, how long would this hit my ranking? Can I get some feedback on making this move?

    Thanks,
    Daniel
     
    DFischer, Dec 13, 2006 IP
  2. hereyago

    hereyago Active Member

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    #2
    i don't know, but the forum looks REALLY good
     
    hereyago, Dec 13, 2006 IP
  3. ImVickieB

    ImVickieB Berserker

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    #3
    How about none of that? :) You can create an entry in you .htaccess file that will denote the index page

    DirectoryIndex main.php

    The problem with that is that it will look for main.php as the default index page for all your directories. If there isn't one, it will return a 404

    You can also list several like:

    DirectoryIndex main.php index.php index.html Ther server will first look for main.html in any given directory. If it isn't there, it will look for index.php and then index.html before returning a 404.

    Hope that helps.
     
    ImVickieB, Dec 13, 2006 IP
  4. yepya.com

    yepya.com Peon

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    #4
    you can put it under /forum and forward http://forum.writersbeat.com to it.
    I like this structure the best.
     
    yepya.com, Dec 13, 2006 IP
  5. ImVickieB

    ImVickieB Berserker

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    #5
    That structure may be better but if the forum is well indexed, it will take a SEO hit until the search engines catch up with the move. Not to mention the lost visitors when the pages they are finding in the search engines are not available.
     
    ImVickieB, Dec 13, 2006 IP
  6. DFischer

    DFischer Peon

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    #6
    Wouldn't that virtually be the same as the forum.php ?

    Because if the .htaccess looks for main.php (the new index) then writersbeat.com would point to the index.

    In order to show the forums now, it would be http://www.writersbeat.com/index.php

    right?

    So the front page would still take a hit, it would be the same thing. no?
     
    DFischer, Dec 13, 2006 IP
  7. ImVickieB

    ImVickieB Berserker

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    #7
    :) That would work too. And then all you would have to do is put an index.php in there. Been a while since I worked with vbulletin, but if it is as easy and changing a variable in the control panel, then go for that. If you have to do any hard coding of the the files so they all point to forum.php, it might be quicker to go the .htaccess route.
     
    ImVickieB, Dec 13, 2006 IP