Forum Integration with 2 Domains

BobHarbison · January 27th, 2013, 11:27 AM

OK, now that I've got one gallery working and integrated properly, I'm working on a different site (I own about 6 licenses).

This one is a bit trickier. For SEO purposes, I chose to have the gallery use a different domain than the forum. It's been that way for literally years, and at this point I'd really prefer not to change it. In fact, that's not a viable option from my perspective.

They're both on the same server of course, so it's accessing the database just fine and works in that respect. I did the integration this morning, and the stylesheets all look good now.

The only problem I've found is the navigation tabs.

The forum URL is: gardenforums.com
GardenForums

The gallery URL is: gardenpics.com
Garden Photo Gallery - GardenPics.com Photo Gallery

When I use the tabs in the forum, they work properly, and get me to the gallery, even though it's a different URL.

However, there's no going back.

The tabs in the gallery are all defaulting to gardenpics.com instead of gardenforums.com for the start of the url, and so when you click "forum" for example, you get a 404. I'm guessing it's using relative addresses?

Is there a way to correct this? Everything else seems to be fine, but if the tabs won't work, it's no good.

I'm also not sure whether this is a PP or VB issue. Since it's using VB headers, it may be outside of PP's control?

BobHarbison · January 27th, 2013, 12:12 PM

Found a solution that seems to work. I went into the navigation tab manager in VB4 and changed the urls to include the appropriate domain name on the front end. So far it's working fine.

Chuck S · January 27th, 2013, 12:29 PM

Yes that will work as well as one other basic solution. In your vb urls options you can turn on the baseurl setting to yes and any relative urls will always use the forum url.

Since our program does not use relative urls that will have no affect on our program.

One thing obviously to consider since your using different domains your users will need to login once going to the gallery again since your domain names are different.

BobHarbison · January 27th, 2013, 12:34 PM

Thanks, I think I'll change that as well, just to cover my bases.

You are, of course, correct about the dual login. It's annoying and confusing. If I was starting over, I wouldn't split the domains. But it's been that way so long that I'd hate to change it.

BobHarbison · January 27th, 2013, 12:39 PM

So here's a question for you...

I've recently shut down one of my VB forums, so I have an extra license. If I was to install VB on the domain that the gallery is on, and then copy the database over from the gardening forum, it would preserve all the gallery user names and the like, correct?

I'd essentially have a clone of the forum at that point, but on the gallery's domain. I could then set up a forum about garden photography, apart from the gardening site, while not losing all of the members I already have and the photos they've posted in the gallery.

Is there any easier method to preserve user names, log in info and photo ownership if I decided to split from the forum and start a new one? Export/import script etc? I might even try Xenforo, since VB5 looks rather unpromising to me.

Chuck S · January 27th, 2013, 01:19 PM

Bob check in google how many site references you have.

Google

input that below into a search

site:gardenpics.com

You have about 5300 links which is nothing really. Personally I would change the domain names since they are on the same server and have an integrated login and make sure you turn on the SEO in the gallery so you get more page links.

You can do it however you wish since its all on the same server. I do not know how you have the directory structuring setup so whatever is easiest depends on that. You can keep the database setup fine. Basically this is how I see you having to do it.

Basically I do not think vb has any path statements in there config or settings offhand. You can sign into your vb admin panel change the urls to gardenpics.com/forum then save. Your forum will break but then simply move that forum directory under your gardenpics.com web root. You should then check your config.php file in vb just to be sure but you should be able to go to your forum at gardenpics.com/forum and have things work. You will need to correct any navigation links but thats it.

Chuck S · January 28th, 2013, 10:50 AM

okay was checking in to see which way you decided to go guess you have been busy. Anyway let me know if you have any questions.

When you are all caught up please take few minutes to give me your ideas looking for some fresh suggestions for the upcoming 8.3 so its not so much a vb5 only release.

http://www.photopost.com/forum/photo...-features.html

Added in a flash player and unlimited profile fields trying to add a few other things to make it worthwhile for non vb5 users to download.

BobHarbison · January 29th, 2013, 09:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuck S

okay was checking in to see which way you decided to go guess you have been busy. Anyway let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I've been busy with other things in my forums. Along with the 6 PP licenses, I also own 6 or 7 VB licenses. I'm currently and somewhat reluctantly upgrading them all to version 4.

Once that's done, I'll come back to this issue. For now it's working, so it's not priority 1.

At the moment I'm leaning towards implementing this answer:
Migrate the existing gallery to gardenforums.com domain. This would be about actual gardening, growing plants, trees, lawns, veggies and the like.
Create a new gallery, with Xenforo integration, on Gardenpics.com for pretty pictures of flowers. The focus would be photography rather than gardening.

I haven't decided yet, as I'm not sure if it's too much duplication of subject matter. Thanks for the reply, I'll keep you posted.

Chuck S · January 29th, 2013, 09:28 PM

yeah if you have an extra license lying around that would be easy enough to do.

If you have any specific questions let me know.

BobHarbison · January 29th, 2013, 09:36 PM

BTW, another compliment. It took me a bit to notice that it added the "featured photos" block automagically since I'd installed one as a widget in the VBCMS home page. I finally noticed it when the second one appeared when I upgraded that forum. I was like "Hey, where did that come from?!"

That's really nice. I've used it before, but always had to fuss around getting all the paths working and configuring it and all that. Now it just shows up... :cool!:

Chuck S · January 29th, 2013, 09:56 PM

Yes the vb4 plugins add alot of stuff look at your forum profile page.