Root o Sub Diretort install

I want to install dolphin on url that used to host a busy forum. Now I dont want users coming and viewing the work in progress. Right now I have a coming soon home page in the root thats all I want them to see for now.

where is the best place to install the work in progress and if its in a subdirectory

If its in sub directory how much work would it be to move it when the redesign is done.

And last if I decide to leave it in a sub directory would I be able to redisign the cooming soon page to have facebook style home page with very little info basically sign up or sign in link that would bring you into the site which I would leave in the subdirectory.

Thank

You can install dolphin in a sub directory no problem, then when its finished apply a htaccess redirect so it appears to be in the root. read here

The join form on the index page has been disscussed b4 with many opinions for and against it, but its upto you and theres no guide on how to do this.

Does the rediercet cause problems SEO.I know that some redirects do?

this is the best approach when you are under construction. dolphins index page is .php so you can setup a .html in root with the coming soon and even with a mailer php file on there so that those who are interested can get on your mailing list or you can just babble back and forth while you get the site up. the html will parse first as a standard on most servers, so anybody who called your domain url would be served the .html file temp under construction for your dolphin site. unless they knew specifically to call the index.php, all would be well. then once your site is up and running the way you want it, you simply rename the index.html to index2.html or rename it to whatever you want to rename it to and your site will then parse to the index.php.

to answer your question about the redirect on the htaccess, absolutely it would affect your SEO and that was IMHO bad advice.

Regards,
DosDawg

Obviously installation into root directory is the way to go, with a index.html to stop visitors browsing while you build.

However alot of new users will be familiar with joomla or drupal b4 dolphin, and for some installing those cms into a sub dir will be normal practice.

However im not an apache geek, nor do i aspire to be, but i try to work things out carefully and research them properly b4 trying any solution...which is what anyone should do really.

Looking a bit further into what fleatrax was saying about having a url which previously hosted a busy forum, which could already have bookmarked pages....to avoid the build up of 404 pages (bad for ranking) a 301 rewrite rule is needed so that all previous pages still in the search engines and bookmarked are passed directly to the new site for ranking... in that case id definatley go ask an expert on a seo forum and modrewrite forum for advice.

I have the rewrite solution on my site, google has indexed it ok so far...i have obvoiusly yet to find out whether its going to ultimately affect my page rankings as they take time and effort to accumulate with good marketing and quality back link building...however in a niche market user generated content can be organically indexed highly, and google loves regulary updated sites.

Ref Seo friendly rewrite method

So I have installed a fresh copy on to the root for what ever reason its calling .php first. If you have any suggestions on how to get the .html to show first  that would be great. I will work on it in the mean time if I figure it out I will post here.

Thanks for your help

by the way its  http://backroomgaming.com/

how to get the .html to show first that would be great => index.html

Im sorry I am not sure what you meant by this...Right now its loading the index.php when you go to backroomgaming.com. I want to it load the index.html while I work on the site..

Upload a index.html file to where you installed Dol.

index.html will load before index.php when you go to your site...hope it help you...

For whatever reason its loading the index.php instead of the index.html

OK I figured it out. If any one ever has this issue the problem was that my server (godaddy) Order of Precedence for files was set up as such: So I changed the name from index.html to default.html

• default.asp
• default.html
• default.htm
• index.php
• index.shtml
• index.html
• index.htm
• home.html
• home.htm
• index.php5
• welcome.html
• welcome.htm
  
  

Now godadd's has differnt set ups for differnt hosting packages. Here is the link http://help.godaddy.com/article/61

Thanks for your help