Posts Tagged ‘vbulletin’How to allow your vBulletin members to change the forum style?To allow your vBulletin members to switch between the installed forum front-end styles navigate to your vBulletin admin panel->Settings->Options->Style & Language Settings->Edit Settings. Select the Yes radio button in the Allow Users To Change Styles area and save the modification. In this way when you log in your forum’s front-end you will see the drop down menu in the bottom left corner and you will be able to change the styles through it. How to change the default vBulletin script?The vBulletin 4 application comes with two main scripts: Forum and CMS. You can switch between them by editing the index.php file. If you want your visitors to open the CMS part by default, uncomment (remove the // string) the following line: require(‘content.php’); Otherwise, if you want the visitors to load directly the Forum part, uncomment the following line: require(‘forum.php’); Only one of the above lines can be uncommented. Put the // string in front of the other. How to use the vBulletin relative path option?The relative path option allows you to move your vBulletin index file outside of the main script folder and put it in the root folder for your web site. For example, if you have a vBulletin installation in the public_html/forum/ folder and you do not have another index file in the public_html/ directory, you can move the vBulletin one there. The VB_RELATIVE_PATH constant was introduced in the vBulletin 4 version. It can be set by editing the vBulletin index.php file. Uncomment the following line and set the relative path to the vBulletin folder: define(‘VB_RELATIVE_PATH’, ‘forum’); If the script is installed in a folder with a different name, replace forum with it. In this way once the visitors open your web site through your domain they will be automatically redirected to the vBulletin forum folder. How to change the redirect type in vBulletin?When you install a new vBulletin 4 or upgrade from vBulletin 3, you will notice that the topics’, threads’ and posts’ URLs are rewritten in a new way. For example the following vBulletin 3 URL: /showthread.php?t=3 will be changed to: showthread.php?3-free-web-hosting vBulletin 4 comes with a hardcoded 302 redirect (temporary redirect) for the topics’, threads’ and posts’ URLs. However, such a redirect is not good for the Search Engine Optimization. It is handled well by the Google search engine, passing the link popularity from the additional URL to the main one, but causes troubles with the other search engines by splitting the link popularity between the two URLs. This has a negative impact on the page rank. Thus the best solution is to change the redirect to 301 (permanent redirect). This is the preferred method since the popularity of the old URL will be brought to the new one. You can easy change the redirect type by editing the includes/class_friendly_url.php file which is located under your vBulletin folder. The following lines should be changed: from: $code = 302; to: $code = 301; and from: exec_header_redirect($url, 302); to: exec_header_redirect($url, 301); How to include external RSS feeds in vBulletin?vBulletin has an internal RSS system that you can use to add RSS feeds to your forum. To manage your RSS feeds, log in to your vBulletin admin area and go to RSS Feeds > RSS Feed Manager. To add a new RSS feed, click the [Add New RSS Feed] button. Every existing RSS feed listed in the RSS Feed Manager can be edited by clicking either on its name or on the [Edit] link next to it. How to optimize vBulletin for better performance?Move Avatars and Profile Pics to the File System In the File Manager, CHMod the customavatars and customprofilepics directories in your forums directory 777. Go to your AdminCP, expand the Avatars menu on the left side and click User Picture Storage Type. Move the avatars and profile pics to the file system. Here is the path you will want to for the avatars: /home/yourCPanelusername/public_html/forums/customavatars The URL should be: /forums/customavatars Here is the path you will want to use for your profile pics: /home/yourCPanelusername/public_html/forums/customprofilepics The URL should be: /forums/customprofilepics If you use something other than /forums/ for your forums directory, you will want to adjust the path accordingly. Also, be sure to replace yourCPanelusername with the name you use to log in to cPanel. In the File Manager, CHMod yourvbulletin_css directory 777 (inside the clientscript directory of your forums directory). Go to your AdminCP, expand the vBulletin Options menu and select vBulletin options. From there select Style and Language Options in the drop down menu. Then set “Store CSS Stylesheets as Files?” to Yes and click Submit. Gzip is a compression technology that can reduce your site’s bandwidth usage and by reducing transfer times, reduce server load. ASO already has gzip enabled on their servers (unless you are on Beta on Gamma) so setting gzip in vBulletin will double gzip pages, making them load slower, so you will want to turn off gzip in vBulletin. Here for instructions for everyone who is not on Beta or Gamma: Go to your AdminCP, expand the vBulletin Options menu and select vBulletin options. From there select Cookies and HTTP Header Options in the drop down menu. Then set “GZIP HTML Output” to No, set “GZIP Compression Level” to 0 and click Submit. Go to your AdminCP, expand the vBulletin Options menu and select vBulletin options. From there select Server Settings and Optimization Options in the drop down menu. Then set “Cached Posts Lifespan” to 90 and click Submit. Other people might recommend setting this to 30 but my forums have it set to 90 and unless you are strapped for server space, setting it to 90 could not hurt. Go to your AdminCP, expand the vBulletin Options menu and select vBulletin options. From there select General Settings in the drop down menu. Then set “Add Template Name in HTML Comments” to off and click Submit. Go to your AdminCP, expand the Usergroups menu and select Usergroup Manager. From there select Unregistered / Not Logged In. Set both “Can Search Forums” and “Can View Who’s Online” to off and click Submit. Go to your AdminCP, expand the vBulletin Options menu and select Search Type. Set “Empty postindex and word tables?” to yes and click Submit. Create a robots.txt file with the following and upload it to your public_html directory: User-agent: * If you use something other than /forums/ for your forums directory, you will want to adjust the paths accordingly. I cannot log in to my vBulletin admin areaThe most common reason for not being able to log in to your admin panel, even though using the correct login details, is in the Cookie Domain and Cookie Path values. The solution is simple – find the tools.php script in the do_not_upload folder of your vBulletin package and upload it to your admincp directory. Then execute it from your browser, i.e. : www.yourdomain.com/forum/admincp/tools.php Use this script to reset the Cookie Domain and Cookie Path back to their default values. Please note that in order for the tools.php script to work, the install folder should exist. |
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