Index vs forums

[oxthorxo]

Just a question out of curiousity. I notice that what I call a forum is mentioned as an index on many occasions on this site. Even nav lnks from skins i've downloaded have an index link rather than a forums link. I know this is an international community so perhaps its a regional thing when i saw that the people I know never mention the forums as an index and when I did have an index link many ppl were confused on what it was. That pretty much goes for "portal page" also. I had to change my nav links from "portal" to "home" and "index" to "forums" to make it clear for my members. Anyone else have this problem?

[shewp41]

Member Banned for Spam and Content Removed

[Jalokim]

index comes from the original HTML language.

index refers to the main page... the first page you see.
Thats why most of the themes, and nav bars will have index, or home instead of forum.

it has not meaning whether you say forum or index... both are correct.
but index is just derived from the html language... making it more ... jargony.
lols

[Cornelia]

And in addition to Jalo's post : If you look at forum scripts such as phpBB2, phpBB3, PunBB, etc. you'll see that most of the time, these scripts respect the tradition that came from HTML.

And Forumotion was originally started from a phpBB2 script that was heavily modified by all this development that was done since FM's beginning in 2004.

And to come back about index : When you run a website that is hosted on a FTP account, the main page's name juste before the extension must be index, because if someone types the URL in its simplest form (ex : http://www.mysite.com), the visitor will be carried to this index page. If there is no such page, the visitor will see a list of files and then, this brings security issues because if someone with bad intentions comes, this person can view the site's whole content (folders and files) and then, can make an attack more easily, and this is called "Directory Traversal". That's why a website hosted on a FTP must have all its directory protected by an index file, mostly index.html, or index.php (if PHP is supported). The file can be empty or have a redirection code.

[Sanket]

And in addition to Jalo's post : If you look at forum scripts such as phpBB2, phpBB3, PunBB, etc. you'll see that most of the time, these scripts respect the tradition that came from HTML.

And Forumotion was originally started from a phpBB2 script that was heavily modified by all this development that was done since FM's beginning in 2004.

And to come back about index : When you run a website that is hosted on a FTP account, the main page's name juste before the extension must be index, because if someone types the URL in its simplest form (ex : http://www.mysite.com), the visitor will be carried to this index page. If there is no such page, the visitor will see a list of files and then, this brings security issues because if someone with bad intentions comes, this person can view the site's whole content (folders and files) and then, can make an attack more easily, and this is called "Directory Traversal". That's why a website hosted on a FTP must have all its directory protected by an index file, mostly index.html, or index.php (if PHP is supported). The file can be empty or have a redirection code.

That was informative, thanks.

[oxthorxo]

Wow, very informative, thankyou. I see alot of the jargon comes from the tech side of html and more behind the scenes from the user whos just browsing the site. However for me I think renaming "portal" to "home" and "index" to "forums" seems more user friendly.

[Jalokim]

true... but for me, my html page is home...
I do not have a portal... so we can't just settle a set name, cos of the index options.

if you use images on your navbar you can easily change the names... but you won't edit the source code.

bouncing off cornelia's post... luckily forumotion has its own hosting service, and FTP is not required like on all other forum hosts... well that is if you need new content to be hosted in the first place.

for example: file hosting.

[Walshy95]

Index is like the main page of the forum which displays your catergories A.K.A. Forums, too. Up to this day, I still don't understand why those catergories for members to talk in are also called forums, too. Also Index is in the terms of HTML language, and that is why 'Index' is used on most skins found on Hitskin.