Rewriting error : /forums/ missing

[paulw]

Hi everyone,

I'm having some issues with my website, and mainly its forums :
Forum Basket-Ball.com - Communauté Basket-ball et NBA

Since yesterday, I can't open any thread !
For exemple, the first thread of this page : the link of the first thread is : http://www.basket-ball.com/forums/di...match-nba.html
But when I clic on that link, the browser tries to open :
http://www.basket-ball.com/discussio...match-nba.html

"/forums/" is missing in the URL !
Same thing if I try to open http://www.basket-ball.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138 .

I went through the vBSEO admin panel but didn't see anything wrong.
I edited config_vbseo.php with :

    define('VBSEO_CUSTOM_DOCROOT',         '/real/root/to/website/forums/');

But didn't seem to do solve the problem.


Where could I tell vbulletin not to erase that "forums/" from the URL ?
Thanks

[paulw]

Hi,

I just disabled vBSEO, to make the forum work... so the previous links may not work the same as they usually do. The problem remains :

Each time I try to open a thread (with vBSEO on), the link looks like (for example):

http://www.basket-ball.com/forums/discussions-nba/137-votre-plus-grand-match-nba.html

But redirects to :

http://www.basket-ball.com/discussions-nba/137-votre-plus-grand-match-nba.html

A "/forums/" is missing in the real URL... and I don't know where I could fix that.

Thanks

[briansol]

Paul, you aren't showing as a customer.

Are you the license holder for this domain? if so, please pm a staff member with your transactionID)

[paulw]

I am not the owner of the domain, but I'm working on the website (mainly development and maintenance).
I have access to the ftp server and to the administration side of the forum. The product is licensed, and I may give the licence key, but I don't know what the transactionID refers to (and where I could find it).

I'm sorry if I was wrong by posting my problem without going through the "licence owner" thing... I wasn't sure I really had to do that.

[briansol]

The licensed owner should add you as their 'tech'

have them go here:
http://www.vbseo.com/usercp/customer_profile/
and enter your name in the blanks at the bottom

[paulw]

Thank you!
I believe I am now registred as a "tech" of the licence owner (he set my username on the page you gave). What would be the next step?

Should I re-post my question in a more appropriate forum? So far, it doesn't look like the forum lets me post in any other section.

[briansol]

ok you are now showing legit (dark blue name)

can you post what re-writes your using (looks like a preset) along with your htaccess file?

[paulw]

I believe the vBSEO is set to use default re-write rules, as it says:

001 - Hierarchic .html type URLs with content relevant forums and threads (Default Settings)

Here is the content of the htaccess:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /forums/

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.basket-ball\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.basket-ball.com/forums/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap_).*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !vbseourl=
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(admincp/|modcp/|chat|cron)
RewriteRule ^(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(jpg|gif)$
RewriteRule ^(archive/.*)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^(admincp|modcp|clientscript|cpstyles|images)/
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]

I just inserted line 2 (RewriteBase /forums/), and also tried without lines 5-6, with no results.
I am not really comfortable with htaccess files, but I'm getting used to it.

In the /www/ folder of the server (the root directory of the website), there is an other .htaccess file where I set:

RewriteRule ^forums/$ - [NC,L]

This should disable rewriting rules from THIS htaccess file in the forums/ subfolder, and that was working for months ; that made me think the issue is related to the forum settings (probably htaccess and vBSEO).

[briansol]

comment out
RewriteBase /forums/

make it:

#RewriteBase /forums/


i think that's why your missing the /forums/ on your links

[paulw]

Actually, I wrote:
RewriteBase /forums/
because it wasn't working without!

Commenting out doesn't solve the problem.

Do you think it is more related to htaccess settings than vBSEO? Because the links are correctly written... but doesn't link to the right pages.

[briansol]

is the above htacess file in /forums ? because it should be.

[paulw]

Yes, it is in the /forums/ folder

[briansol]

RewriteRule ^forums/$ - [NC,L]


what is the purpose of this other file in root?

ie, whats the condition?

[paulw]

This is set (I think) to disable rewrite when inside the forums directory.
The htaccess in the root directory is composed of many rules, so the line you pasted should prevent URLs in /forums/ to be rewrited with rules from this file.
Still, the /forums/.htaccess file should work on anything into the /forums/ directory.

It worked for months, I really don't understand how that problem appeared.

[paulw]

Hi,

The problem I described in my first message is still there.
When I activate vBSEO, links displayed are OK (i.e. www.website.com/forums/category/112-thread.html), but are redirecting to a wrong adress, without "forums/" (www.website.com/category/112-thread.html).
The links redirect to a 404 error page, "the requested url was not found", and also displays that message : "Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. "

I had to disable the plugin to make the forum work again... but I want to fix this.



I have a *huge* htaccess in the root directory of the website.
I tried to remove every rule regarding the links beginning with /forums/

I have a basic htaccess in the /forums/ folder :

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.basket-ball\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.basket-ball.com/forums/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap_).*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !vbseourl=
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(admincp/|modcp/|chat|cron)
RewriteRule ^(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(jpg|gif)$
RewriteRule ^(archive/.*)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^(admincp|modcp|clientscript|cpstyles|images)/
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]

In that .thaccess, I tried to set:
RewriteBase /forums/ OR RewriteBase /
But none of these is working.


I really don't know what to do here, and will appreciate some help.
I'm not very comfortable with htaccess files, and I do believe this is were the problem is.

Thanks