Adding Wordpress to a vBulletin 4 site

[nordwulf]

Our site currently uses vB4 with their CMS / blog system. While it has been working out pretty good for us, it still has its limitations. I would like to add Wordpress to our site for a better blogging experience, as well as a large image gallery archive, file downloads repository and perhaps a Classifieds add-on.

While it would be nice, I am not looking to integrate the vBulletin user database with Wordpress.

The vB software is currently installed in the site root. Would it be best to add WP in its own subdirectory? Or would it be better to move vBulletin to a forum subdirectory and install WP in the site root?

Another possibility would be to set up a new domain and keep vB and WP completely separate. Not sure what would be better for SEO and if it would be confusing for the users.

vBulletin 4 has been working fine for us but upgrading to different forum software is an option as well. Invision has all of the things we want to have in a site but their newest version is still a work of progress and some of the negative reviews are not reassuring.

I like Xenforo but not familiar with it and not sure if there any good blog, image gallery, classifieds and file downloads addons.

Any other suggestions are very welcome as well. I run a few blogs on other sites with WP and am comfortable using/changing it. I have some experience with Joomla and also like that as well.

The site: http://saabworld.net

 

[Adam H]

If your going to stay with VB4 then id advise you to put WP into a subdirectory or subdomain and keep your forum in the root, No point in moving it and potentially causing your self issues unless you've got specific plans to be an editorial site with WP front end so to speak, if that was the case then id seriously weight up your options of migrating to a different platform.

The reason I say that is because if your going to cause mass upset structure wise by moving the forum out of root, you might as well do the big change at the same time rather than upsetting things now........and then again when VB4 runs out of steam.

That being said.......

• Stay well clear of Joomla
• Be extremely careful about choosing your migration platform, IPB wouldnt be my recommendation.

Take a real good look at Wordpress homepage/editorial and Xenforo, although it maybe unfamiliar its better to learn a solid, clean and reliable setup (Which is search engine friendly in 2016 ) rather than moving to a setup you will most likely regret and have to go through hell and back before realising a little learning curve wasnt a big deal after all. Despite many peoples opinions on various addons for most forum CMS alternatives they are still no competition for wordpress or bespoke setup.

 

[Empire]

Adam H

How simple would it be just to use wordpress for one page of your forum? For CMS

 

[GhettoChild]

Adam is right. You should keep WP in it own subdomian folder. I found it causes strange 404 errors on your forum when you put it the www root folder.

With Google increasing cracking down on sites with bad on page optimization, VB 4.2 is a bad choice. It's too old support many of the newer standards for SEO.

 

[Adam H]

I found it causes strange 404 errors on your forum when you put it the www root folder.

Thats not something that shouldnt happen if you've got the correct redirects in place, although there are some situations where it may not be possible to use certain redirects in most cases you shouldnt just settle for 404's.

With Google increasing cracking down on sites with bad on page optimization, VB 4.2 is a bad choice. It's too old support many of the newer standards for SEO.

I never said that, its not "bad" for SEO, Its just getting old and its more cost effective and less time consuming than migrating to a system which does it out of the box rather than continuously patching and trying to enhance old setups, most general admins wouldnt have the ability or knowledge to do effectively.

You could/can make VB4 responsive, you could add microdata/markup, you could strip out the crap to make page speeds better and you could make pages naturally better for SEO but why spend that much time or money on something that in 12-18 months time......you will most likely feel the need to migrate away from anyway.

 

[nordwulf]

Thanks for all the helpfull comments. I decided it was best to leave the vB4 install as is on its own domain and use a new domain with Wordpress to build a new site. I think if you have links from and to to each site, it will be easy for users to follow.

I recently removed vBSEO from our site and don't want to mess with any more redirects and all that fun stuff. The forum has gone through enough changes in the last 5 years.

It's good to start fresh with a new domain and WP install.

http://saabworld.net (vB4)
http://saabworld.org (WP)

Thanks again!