Page rank query about my forum

[Pirate]

my forum which i opened in feb and its home page is PR2 but the archive page is pr4 is this normal ?
on the other hand there is another forum which is also got vbseo on it hase a pr4 home page and archive page is pr4 aswell

can any one explain why is this difference in treatment from google when both the forums were launched on the same day is this normal or have i messed something up ?

India Broadband Broadband in India - Powered by vBulletin
Health and Beauty Salon Forum - Powered by vBulletin

on indiabroadband i asked for help when i installed vbseo and some one from here made a backup bak_.htaccess do i really need it ? and ive tried everything i just cant upgrade to new vb version or the vbseo new version :( any ideas what i should do ?

below is whats there in this bak_.htaccess file

 # 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] 
  

[Michael]

Firstly, whilst it is usually logical to assume that your website index page would be enjoying the bulk of your PageRank, with websites lower down the navigational structure being associated less value this is not always the case. For example, on my website, The Staff Lounge - Your vBulletin Resource, the homepage enjoys a PR4, whilst the forums, The Staff Lounge - Your vBulletin Resource, and numerous other pages on the website enjoy PR5 rankings. It is of course very dependant on how many people are actually linking to that particular page, and the number and weight of each individual outbound link you have got associated on your page.

However, Google has never actually revealed the complete description regarding how the Google PageRank system actually calculates ranks for pages, so this is just speculation.

Regarding your other query; i would probally suggest that because your Health and Beauty forums are alot more popular reletively when compared with the Indian Broadband discussion forums, that because there is more content within the archive that there have been more instances to link to these pages from fellow external links, thus increasing the rankings of your archive page and your forum index page.

Oh, and could you provide some additional information regarding what errors you are actually experiencing during the vBulletin and vBSEO upgrade. The backup bak_.htaccess file, seems to be just a backup file which isnt neccessary required to be uploaded directly to your server but could perhaps be useful for backup purposes.

[Joe Ward]

Pirate - you should remove the "Powered by vBulletin" from your title in your template:

[HOW-TO] Remove "Powered by vBulletin" from Your Page Titles