Install path - nice to Google, keep options open

Post by **Don Chambers** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 5:54 am

I try to do what I can from a functional and design perspective for s9y, but can always use some input on server issues.

I'm setting up another s9y site. Here is the current state of things:

1) domain exists as http://www.mydomain.com.
2) Domain currently has index.html page that says "site coming soon".
3) site will initially, and possibly always, feature s9y content as the primary site.
4) A forum subdomain will exist running phpBB or vBulletin as http://forums.mydomain.com.

I want to get things right from an installation perspective, and also .htaccess, robots.txt, and anything else!

Priorities
1) I want to install s9y immediately, but want to make sure my current index.html content displays if someone hits http://www.mydomain.com.
2) I want to be able to configure, test and create s9y content "live" while still displaying my "site coming soon" index.html file. If someone "finds" my s9y install - that is OK. I just do not want it automatic... yet!
3) once live, I want all traffic hitting http://www.mysite.com to invoke s9y.
4) I want to keep open the possibility that the root domain of http://www.mydomain.com MIGHT become something OTHER than s9y in the future, but still have a s9y blog, and hopefully not lose all my entry links in the process.
5) Use URL rewriting for "pretty links".
6) SEO best-practices (ie, best possible page rank).
7) include non-s9y html files as close to the root as possible (I expect the need to display some html files that are not s9y static or entry pages, and want them referenced as close to the root as possible).
8.) Once testing is done, I want to "flip a switch" and move from "somewhat hidden" to "live" (sandbox not really an option here).

So what is the best install path, and corresponding .htaccess rules (or anything else):

a) www.mydomain.com (root)
b) www.mydomain.com/blog (or /serendipity)
c) subdomain: http://blog.mydomain.com.
d) other.

Additional: I can create a subfolder under www in userCP, as would be expected. If I create a subdomain, that also creates a subfolder under www, but also creates http://subdomain.mydomain.com

williamts99 · Post by **williamts99** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:05 pm

I have gone with the subdomain for the same reasons that you mention. In case I want to change things in the future I can still leave blog.mydomain.com in tact so that links don't disappear.

Then you can just rename your 'coming soon' index.html and have a new one that redirects to blog.mydomain.com that contains something like..

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
      "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
  <title>redirect</title>
  <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1; url=http://blog.mydomain.com" />
</head>

<body>
<p></p>
</body>
</html>