Happy New Year and a couple of pre-installation questions

Hi folks and Happy New Year to you all!

I'm an ASP developer so bear with me if mod rewrite questions seem a little simple! I've purchased vBSEO to help my search engine presence for:

http://www.RenaultForums.co.uk

I appreciate the principle of using mod rewrite to change the calling structure for my pages and I'm really hopeful that vBSEO will help me to make great improvements to my rankings - especially Google

Just a couple of questions before I get started:

1. Zend Optimizer

When I run the test script it tells me that Zend Optimizer is installed but not Ioncube, but then continues to tell me that the test script was unable to find Zend Optimizer? You can see the test script here:

http://www.renaultforums.co.uk/test.php

I'm a bit confused as this seems to be contradicting itself. Is everything in place for installation?

2. vBa CMPS

I've recently been using vBa CMPS to provide some "proper" content on my front page. In order to do this the usual vBulletin index.php is now forum.php and this has been set using the relevant admincp setting. Will this cause me any concerns or will I just need to add some custom rewrite rules?

That's my questions for now. I'm going to try installing in the morning and if I get any problems I hope you don't mind me coming back to this thread

Cheers for now!

Hello Mike,

1. Zend Optimizer

It means that you have Zend Optimizer installed, but it is an older version and you should upgrade it to the recent one if possible.

2. vBa CMPS

There is no issues with using vB+vBa+vBSEO
The only thing is that "Force Forum Root as Homepage" option in vbseocp should be set to "No" (since your sorums homepage is forums.php).

Originally Posted by Oleg Ignatiuk

Hello Mike,

It means that you have Zend Optimizer installed, but it is an older version and you should upgrade it to the recent one if possible.

There is no issues with using vBulletin+vBa+vBSEO
The only thing is that "Force Forum Root as Homepage" option in vbseocp should be set to "No" (since your sorums homepage is forums.php).

Thanks Oleg. Sounds good to me! I'll get cracking on the install this morning

In people's experience, are hosts usually up to speed with requests for updates to Zend Optimizer or a bit reluctant to do this for one person?

Cheers

Ok - install seems to be very straightforward. However, getting a few problems...

It seems to be rewriting the URLs as expected, but I just get a page not found message. For example:

http://www.renaultforums.co.uk/forum.php

The top forum is "Welcome to RenaultForums" which is rewritten to:

http://www.renaultforums.co.uk/welcome-renaultforums/

However, this just results in a "Not Found" error. I'm just poking around vBSEO CP to make sure I've not missed anything obvious. I've unticked the "Force Forum Root as Homepage?" option by the way. Any suggestions are gratefully received!

Hi Mike,

didn't you forgot to upload .htaccess file as described in installation instructions?

Nope - it's there and was uploaded in binary format...

I've just checked .htaccess on the server and it looks like this:

Code:

# Comment the following line (add '#' at the beginning)
# to disable mod_rewrite functions.
# Please note: you still need to disable the hack in
# the vBSEO control panel to stop url rewrites.
RewriteEngine On
# Some servers require the Rewritebase directive to be
# enabled (remove '#' at the beginning to activate)
# Please note: when enabled, you must include the path
# to your root vB folder (i.e. RewriteBase /forums)
#RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(sitemap.*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} (admincp|modcp|clientscript|cpstyles|images)/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1 [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !vbseourl=
RewriteRule ^(.*\.php)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^(archive/.*)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

Should this be in the / folder or /htdocs folder?

I've just switched vBSEO back on again by the way...

PM sent

Ok - just replied

Just to keep the readers informed...

Oleg has had a look at the installation - thanks Oleg. He has determined that some Apache configuration parameters are missing on the server. As I am on a shared server these can not be set. I'm currently trying to convince the site owner to go from £7.99 per month shared hosting to £49.00 per month dedicated, but it's not looking hopeful at present :(

I'm on a shared server and vbseo runs perfectly fine, so if your current host can't set those variables then maybe it's ideal to move somewhere else?

Problem is - what if the new host is the same as my current host and does not support the variables either?

Email the host you're thinking of switching to and ask if they do prior to signing up.

I'm hosted with hostrocket.com myself and they've been perfectly fine with it

Sounds like a good recommendation to me! I'll have a look at hostrocket.com and check out the prices