URL Structure

Hello, I'm liking what I'm seeing so far in this mod, but have a couple questions before I buy.

1. I currently use PMWiki. The urls look something like this: http://mysite.com/wiki/index.php/category/subcategory, but it looks like the url would be http://mysite.com/wiki/key+word:key+word. Would there be any way to tweak it & keep the same exact url (for seo purposes), or would I have to do a 301 redirect for all my indexed urls and wait for google to rei-ndex all my pages?

2. My forum isn't installed on the root, it's at http://mysite.com/forums, and my wiki is on http://mysite.com/wiki. If I install vaultwiki in my forum folder, would it make the url of the wiki look like http://mysite.com/forums/wiki/ ? Would I be able to make it http://mysite.com/wiki somehow, or would I have to move the forum to the root first?

I'd really like to keep the urls intact if at all possible. Almost all my traffic is coming from google, I'd really hate to lose all my rankings. I guess that's the main thing I'm worried about right now. Other than that, It'd be a fantastic addition to my site. PMWiki sucks big time...

There is no importer for PMWiki. You will have to copy your articles over manually.

1. Sorry, but in VaultWiki the / character is valid in article names. As a result, it would not be able to tell the difference between a category/subcategory/article in the URL and the actual article name. You will have to use a 301 until google re-indexes the pages. We originally designed the URLs like MediaWiki URLs. However, you might be able to parse the existing URLs using some hook code (special_verify_id). This is not the first request like this we've had. While it might not be ready before you purchase, this could be a feature we implement soon.

2. VaultWiki uses some core forum files to function properly. The wiki would have to be installed at your forum root, so the URLs will be http://mysite.com/forums/wiki. You can use a 301 in this case or rewrite http://mysite.com/wiki to this location. Either way, any auto-generated URLs will still be based on your forum's file structure. To keep all the same URLs, you can move your forum to the root and rewrite /forums to the root.

Ok, thanks. Can you give me instructions on how to do the 301 redirect? Do I need to make an htaccess entry for each single url of my wiki? What kind of effect would that have on my search engine rankings?

What is parsing and special_verify_id? Would it work for me in my case? When do you anticipate your next release that would possibly have this feature?

Thanks!

In the htaccess, you would have to create only 1 RewriteRule for your PMWiki, pointing it to the VaultWiki file instead. Search engines will not be able to tell the difference. How to structure your rules will make a little more sense once you have purchased the product. I would recommend having one our techs set that up for you, or having one walk you through it.

For performance reasons, I wouldn't recommend leaving the rule in place beyond when you know Google has re-indexed your site. This kind of setup will pass your old PMWiki-style URL to VaultWiki.

VaultWiki will not be able to read this correctly unless you create a plugin. The proper hook for this would be special_verify_id. If you set up your forums similar to your PMWiki's category/subcategories, this would be a relatively easy plugin to create (4 or 5 lines of code).

An official feature like this might include an option for VaultWiki to encode its own URLs in the PMWiki style. In that case, some significant changes to VaultWiki's caching mechanism would need to be made first. A change like this is possible for the next major release, but unlikely this would occur for several months.

Ok thanks for the help so far. I have a couple more things to ask.

1. I have vbadvanced cmps installed on my forum. Would I be able to use it with vaultwiki pages, like make a sidebar with all the different wiki categories in it?

2. I have vbseo installed also. Will that create any conflicts?

3. What exactly are the additional categories and images products that come with the premium package? I got a small idea about the categories, but there's no info at all about the images product anywhere.

1. There are no widgets/sidebars for vbadvanced that come bundled with VaultWiki. The wiki (with some exceptions) uses vBulletin's threads and forums, in case you were considering creating your own.

2. There is a conflict with vbSEO, because VaultWiki uses a different URL structure, yet identifies its internal name as "showthread" for some linking up with default vBulletin code. Since vbSEO checks the internal name rather than the actual filename, this causes problems. This issue can be worked around with an additional .htaccess rule. If you search for "vbseo" in the VaultWiki bugs, features, etc. area, you should find it.

3. For an example of what can be done with Images, see [vault]Th[/vault]. Also try clicking on the images.