12 replies to this topic

[tempy]

I am considering changing the forum software of a web site that I use - probably to vBulletin or Invision PB. I know that both of these tools can 'suck in' my topics, members and so on from the old forum software I am using (especially vB).

So far so good.

But the main problem is that all of the url's will change. Other than individually adding several thousand 301 redirects to my .htaccess file, . Can anyone suggest a better way forward?

Thanks.

[Jill]

I would simply let the old URLs expire, and the new ones get indexed.

It will take a few months, but imo it will be worth it to avoid any headaches and technical glitches.

[tempy]

I would simply let the old URLs expire, and the new ones get indexed.

It will take a few months, but imo it will be worth it to avoid any headaches and technical glitches.

Really? You wouldn't even 301 the top level? What technical issues do you feel might be presented?

The thing is, that this forum doubles as an educational resource for many of its visitors. There are numerous links from external sites directly to specific topics. The possibility that these visitors would simply arrive at a 404 page is something I'd rather not see.

I was wondering what would be involved for a programmer to code some kind of script to rediect the old urls to the new. I suppose it would have to be someone familiar with both sets of software.

[chrishirst]

simplest way would be to use a scripted 404 page. Use the parameter passed to the 404 page to determine the requested URL and then dynamically redirect.
Probably take about 20 - 30 lines of nested/stepped if statements.

[Scottie]

I don't know what your ultimate goal is, but when I switched forum software I simply shut down the old forum, closed it for registrations and new posts and posted a large notice that the forum was closed and to please visit the new forum at www.newforum.com/newforum.

That's one option. It's a little messy and creates some duplicate issues, but as long as one or the other of the URL's appears in the SERP's, it doesn't bother me if it's the old one and visitors will be able to easily find the new info.

[microbe]

Why not set up a 404 page to take any requests fior your defunct forum and redirect them to the home page of the new one.

If your forum is busy then you could find Chris's solution a bit laborious and if it isn't then I can't see much point bothering going to that length.

The only people who are going to hit the redirect are likely to be referrals from search engines and you could check your logs and see how many they are and if there are specific pages attracting large numbers of referrals and just deal with those.

Anyway, it is the search engine's own problem if they can't keep up with changes to your site - don't see why you should pander to them anyway.

[Jill]

Really? You wouldn't even 301 the top level?

No, personally I wouldn't.

What technical issues do you feel might be presented?

I don't know, but I would just prefer to keep things easy and neat and get rid of the old and bring in the new.

A personal preference after seeing years of sites changing and getting reindexed, etc.

Would definitely have a custom 404 though, that had a search box and sitemap, at a minimum.

[chrishirst]

BTW I wasn't proposing every thread Even I'm not quite geeky enough so tackle a script for that. (although given a cross ref'd database it would be simple enough )

Just redirect the forum cats and important pages.

[Jill]

Just redirect the forum cats and important pages.

Oh, well that sounds much more manageable and something even I might try!

[tempy]

simplest way would be to use a scripted 404 page. Use the parameter passed to the 404 page to determine the requested URL and then dynamically redirect.
Probably take about 20 - 30 lines of nested/stepped if statements.

Thanks Chris.

However, (how shall I put this?) I have no idea what you re talking about.

OK, I have an 'in principle' understanding of what a scripted 404 page is. Would you mind explaining in a couple of lines (if that's doable) what this would do and what the results would be?

Obviously, I would be hiring a thirdy party to the actual coding.

Thanks.

[tempy]

I don't know what your ultimate goal is, but when I switched forum software I simply shut down the old forum, closed it for registrations and new posts and posted a large notice that the forum was closed and to please visit the new forum at www.newforum.com/newforum.

That's one option.  It's a little messy and creates some duplicate issues, but as long as one or the other of the URL's appears in the SERP's, it doesn't bother me if it's the old one and visitors will be able to easily find the new info.

Thanks Scottie

The ultimate goal is to cause as little disruption as possible. Because the forum is used as a resource - there are links to topics from academic sites, for example - I am keen to preserve, as much as possible, the link structure.

I could, as someone else suggested, just 301 redirect the most popular threads, but I really would like to be able to do the whole lot. Also, a number of the topics have internal links (similar in many ways to the way this forum interlinks keywords). I would hate to have all of these broken or have to relink all of them by hand.

Would definitely have a custom 404 though, that had a search box and sitemap, at a minimum.

Hmmm. That may be another option. In fact, how about an automatically updated sitemap of the new forum? That might help to get it (re)indexed quickly too.

[chrishirst]

With a 404 response there is a querystring passed to the page, "404;Requested_URI" on IIS, Apache is probably the same or similar . So you can extract the details from this and then work out where to redirect to.

How simple (or difficult) this would be to build the destination URI would depend on how the import works. If it maintains the existing thread, post and member IDs, then it becomes a simple matter of replacing parameter and pagenames and constructing the URI. If it replaces them in the DB with new ID Nos it will need a cross referencing table(s) of old to new. Then it will be a matter of extracting the requested values, calling the appropriate DB query then reconstructing the URI.

I would hope to think that any decent programmer, when writing a convert/import routine would take forum interlinking into account and import the IDs. It has to be easier than trying to run replace queries on the database to redo all the post to member references in every table.

[tempy]

Thanks Chris. Very helpful.