GardenersCorner URL Slight Change and Reasoning

Morning all, you will notice there has been a slight change to the url structure here

previously we used gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/forums for forum sections which isnt that user friendly and also entirely negated the awesome pool of "Google juice" we could have been using for gardenerscorner.co.uk/

So as of today we have a slight change.

The Forums are now found at gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums (notice the s after forum) and remain exactly as they have always and will continue to do so.

the old url now redirects to gardenerscorner.co.uk, to ensure all the forums links remain active/working for threads.

and at gardenerscorner.co.uk we have a custom coded content page which allows new users and current members to at a glance see the latest, most liked, most read or most replied posts in any of the Topic related forums (by topic related i mean off topic forums not related to gardening, such as site news, recipes etc are not displayed on the new page, but continue to exist as always on the forums exactly where they have always been)

There are so more changes coming shortly, to help the admins better sort content, and new tools related to photo competition to make displaying winner work correctly are also in the pipeline

 

Thanks @Nudaii

I haven't the faintest idea what that all means but it doesn't really matter. I can still log on the way I always do (never go to the Home page) and I'm still seeing everything as I have always done.

If it makes things easier for the admins and easier for newbies then it's great.

 

yes indeed we made sure that people who wished to continue using the old way werent affected, and that the forum itself remained unchanged by the new homepage, which supplements instead of overriding the traditional forum expeirance.

 

As someone asked thought i would answer here, the old way the gardenerscorner.co.uk part of the domain worked was just like a sign post, it would be like covering half of your garden with signs to other half, google finds such things wasteful and it damages rankings as it can affect the ranking of the root domain (gardenerscorner.co.uk)

this change turns gardenerscorner.co.uk into a portal which pulls all the amazing content into a single page, latest/best 25 depending on filters selected by google/guests members, while allowing the forums url (gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums) to continue to be the forum that everyone loves.

People who like it can use the new portal, members who dont want to bother with it can simply bookmark gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums and the site is exactly the same as its always been

the literal only real differance for those who simply wish to just use the forum,
is instead of gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum its now gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums (s added to forum)

 

well the original system is there as always gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums literally unchanged by this new page, and works 100% same as yesterday and will always continue to work as always, the hub of activity/info and knowledge that has made Gc great

in basic typing "gardenerscorner.co.uk" used to just redirect/point to the forums (gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums) now typing/visiting "gardenerscorner.co.uk" has both its own page and also has links to forum (gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums)

when planning this change we wanted to make sure the forum which is now in its 12 year i believe? remained exactly the same and didnt cause any interuption to the members who are used to and prefer the old way. thats why bookingmarking gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums url allows you to basically continue exactly as you did before, as we know people of any age dont like to have something they are used to turned on its head!

 

howdy the relogin could have been caused by the server needing a reboot, there was a several week back log of queries which were causing the server to hang, that was flushed to speed up server.

by homepage you mean gardenerscorner.co.uk ? if so the forum homepage is at gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums as the root domain (gardenerscorner.co.uk) now displays a seperate home, so to sum it up

website homepage: gardenerscorner.co.uk
forum homepage: gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums (this is what you want to go to if you are wanting the old look homepage/the actual forums)

To reiterate the forums (gardenerscorner.co.uk/forums) are the focus and heart of the site as always, and all the normal features you are used to are and will always be availble there

the only change which affected them directly is an added s to the url from /forum to /forums, this was done to comply with the correct format the xenforo software uses.

A benefit that will affect all members is this new homepage will handle the traffic in a lighter way for bots/guests, resulting in a faster server for everyone

 

actually thats the plan to build two sets of serps (google indexing records) for GC one with the forum and another with the posts/homepage and research shows that the homepage style has a better guest to member conversion rate than a traditonal forum list

so Gc will now get the benefit of both the tradional forum and the new look once google updates its records.