Need some help/tips with moving my Forum

[BozzaJos]

Hey guys!

I've been a vBulletin user for some years now and even though I am a total novice in html/php/coding etc., I think vBulletin has down an excellent job on making it as easy as possible.

I do, however, have a question. I've always been using vBulletin as both my site and Forum. With the help of vBAdvanced, I managed to get a frontpage but options are really limited and the layout isn't pretty looking in my opinion.
So I decided to build a new site and used Joomla for it. Since my html/php knowledge is so limited, Joomla is a great way to still be able to create something nice as a site. The site is almost finished and when it's done, it is time to get some things moving.

At this moment, the Joomla site is running in the "/temp" directory. The current site/forum is running in the root. When the Joomla site is ready, I want to move it to the root dir of course and move the Forum to "/forums". What I would like to know is what I have to keep in mind before starting to make the moves?

Can I just move all the files of vBulletin to the "forums" directory or isn't it that easy? For example, what to do with the cookie settings on forehand?
Another problem will be that ALL the links mentioned in the posts on the Forum are linked to the root of my site and when I move it, all the links will be invalid. Is there an easy way to edit all these links? Keep in mind that the current size of my database is 315.6 MB.

So could you guys please let me know what the best procedure is to move my Forum to a subdirectory? Again, please keep in mind that my knowledge about this all is pretty limited so I would need a well-explained tutorial.

Thanks a lot in advance and I hope there is someone willing to help me out.

Kind regards,

Bozza

[glennybee]

Yes that's pretty much all you've got to do.

Wherever you decide to put the forum, make sure you change the Forum URL setting in AdminCP or it won't work.

You can tar the files up, move the tar to the new location and untar it, that's probably the safest way.

To create a tar file you will need to log into the server via SSH.

Navigate to /home/user/public_html (or the windows equivalent).

tar -pcvvf forum.tar *

This will zip everything in your /public_html folder and put it in forum.tar. You can then create a /forums folder, move the zip into the folder and untar it.

cd /home/user/public_html
mkdir forums
mv forum.tar forums
cd forums
tar pxvf forum.tar

That's you moved your existing forum from the root to the /forums folder.

Do the same with your new forum in the /temp folder, tar it, move it to root and untar it. You can delete the .tar files once you're finished and 100% sure that your new forum is working. Because you've got a backup of the /public_html folder, you can always delete everything and copy it back if you screw up.

Remember to edit the /includes/config.php file with the database name and username.

[BozzaJos]

Thank you glennybee for your quick and useful answer. By the way, isn't it possible to transfer all the files to my hard disk and upload the files in the new folder? Will create a back-up as well or is there something not good with that method?

As for editing the urls in all the posts, does anyone has a solution for that?
Help is much appreciated! Thank you in advance.

[glennybee]

You don't need to transfer them to your PC and then upload them, it's all done on the server.

[BozzaJos]

You don't need to transfer them to your PC and then upload them, it's all done on the server.

I meant as an alternative to your method. I don't have SSH access to I would have to let the webhosting company do it and I don't really like that.

[glennybee]

I would move to a host that does offer SSH then, just my preference though.

Some companies don't offer it my default and you need to request it.