If I move my forum to another directory...

[Centertainment1]

Currently my forum is located in the root directory of my website at www.scienceutopia.com, which I bought a month ago. However, it has recently come to my attention that I want to make a main website for the forum, and would therefore have to move the forum to www.scienceutopia.com/forums.

My page rank for my forum is still 0, so it's not too much of a problem in that respect, but how long would it take to "recover" all my Google and Yahoo links if I were to set the crawl rate to every 2 days. Because I don't want people entering incorrect links that don't work!

What would be the easiest way of doing this, and if I were to use a CMS like Joomla for my main site, then how would I make a sitemap that applied to both scienceutopia.com and scienceutopia.com/forums, or would I have to make 2 sitemaps (one for each)?

And one other question - will making a site with the forum increase it's value?

Thanks,
Ctm

[MajorTom]

IMHO, if you've already been building backlinks, I'd suggest just leaving your site as it is and building additional pages in subdomains or other directories. If you absolutely want to move it, just use a 301 redirect and the search engines will pick up on the changes.

You can do 301 redirects in a lot of ways, but the recommended way is in your .htaccess file.

[Centertainment1]

Originally Posted by MajorTom

IMHO, if you've already been building backlinks, I'd suggest just leaving your site as it is and building additional pages in subdomains or other directories. If you absolutely want to move it, just use a 301 redirect and the search engines will pick up on the changes.

You can do 301 redirects in a lot of ways, but the recommended way is in your .htaccess file.

You see, the thing is, the vast majority of backlinks simple link back to www.scienceutopia.com without any specific pages. If I were to put the site where there is scienceutopia.com, the links would still be valid, but rather than linking to the forum, they'd be linking to the site.

And since it's only been open a month, hopefully I wouldn't have problems re-building backlinks.

But my main concern is how easily and quickly will my forums correct links turn up on Google?

Thanks

[MajorTom]

So then, what's the problem and why do you keep posting your link in your questions ?

[Centertainment1]

Originally Posted by MajorTom

So then, what's the problem and why do you keep posting your link in your questions ?

I want to know if what I'm saying is correct - I need verification. And there are still some questions I asked that haven't been answered.

I post the links to avoid confusion when referring to domains. If you're really concerned, I can remove them