Dear phpBB SEO:

I installed vanilla phpBB3.0.0 (no SEO mods) about a week ago and I must say that I am impressed with phpBB3! I'm also very impressed with your SEO Mod and want to get it installed!!

Please note that I already have data in my phpBB3.0.0 forum. I am a little confused as to how to install the phpBB3 SEO Premod (full install package).

I read the part "Update 3.0.RC7 => 3.0.0. It says to download the phpBB_SEO_3.0RC7_to_3.0.0 package but I don't think that I need to do this part since I already have vanilla 3.0.0 running.

I skip to the section "Installation Instruction" but there I am confused too, because step #1 says to upload all files. Is it ok to do so, and just keep my original config.php file?

I'm also curious, does phpBB3 SEO make changes to the database structure or create new indexes, views, etc?

Best Regards,

Jeff

P.S. Also, please note that since my vanilla php3.0.0 forum is new, I have not linked it to my site (so Google does not currently know that this forum exists). This means that I don't have to worry about redirecting any links. Once I get the SEO Premod installed, I plan to link the forum to my site so that it starts getting crawled by search engines.

Please let me know if what I did is wrong or if there is a better way to transfer my phpBB3 Gold data to phpBB3 SEO Premod:

1) I installed phpBB3 SEO Premod into a different directory and assigned it a different database.

2) Using the 'Administration Control Panel', I backed up all data from my phpBB3 Gold, and restored that data into phpBB3 SEO Premod.

It seems to be working well in my tests.

Doing a backup/restore makes sense. For future reference, you can switch between install locations for a given database by modifying the script_path variable in phpBB's config table (using phpMyAdmin). That's how phpBB determines what is the "root" of the installation. If you want to switch database locations, modify the config.php file in the install directory.

Dan,

Thank you for your response. You mentioned that we can switch database locations by modifying the config.php file. I have a couple of other questions that I am hoping that you or someone else can answer.

1) Does this mean that I could have simply modified the config.php so that Premod installation points the database created by Gold?

2) Does Premod use the exact database structure created by Gold or will Premod modify the database tables, indexes and/or fields?

If so, this is definately easier than doing the backup/restore procedure that I had done when transfering the Gold data into the Premod database.

Thanks again,

Jeff

1. Yes.

2. Yes. The premod doesn't use the database for its configuration. The config is stored in phpbb_seo/cache/phpbb_cache.php.

Bottom line is you can switch back and forth using the same database by twidding the config table in the database.

BACKGROUND:

That's how I do my testing with "live" data. I backup the live board, copy it down to a local xampp install, and change three entries:

server_name
cookie_domain
script_path (optional)

So for example my local test site is "www.hb.com". I've added an entry in etc/hosts that maps it to local host (127.0.0.1). The server_name = www.hb.com and the cookie domain = .hb.com. If I want to test a mod locally while having the original install available, script_path = the test directory. By having a local install and using a different host name that's mapped in the (local) hosts file, I can access the live board and the local test board simultaneously (www.hb.com = local, www.home-barista.com = live). Once I'm satisfied everything works, I upload the affected files.

Since the premod has no database entries, it is unaffected by the above. That is, the only file that differs between the local test install and the live board is config.php. The only database entry differences are the ones mentioned above.

Make sense now?

The topic is fully covered here : phpBB3 => phpBB SEO premod

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