[t-h-c]

Hi Everyone,

Have ran into a problem which is a right nightmare! any help would be much appreciated! need to upgrade to vb 5 and due to vbseo (100k posts all indexd currently) when upgrade happened it of course broke every existing url so we had to switch back....

How can we do this without causing a huge upset to 100k indexd posts ? and posts linkd from other sites etc...

Thanks in advance...

[Paul M]

It depends on what url structure you used in vbseo, but generally the answer is you cannot do much at all, at least unless you are quite experienced in writing redirect rules, and even than, it still depends on that initial question (the url structure used).

[TheLastSuperman]

I'd gather a set of URL examples from your current site, since vBSEO is not longer available, look for DB Tech's DBSEO instead and inquire with them directly on their site i.e. provide the URL examples to them and ensure they state those will work in DBSEO upon purchase etc. <-- that is if you want SEO done easily w/o any need for you making changes.

[cellarius]

Depending on the vBSEO rules you used, it is not too hard to 301-rewrite them back to standard vB format (unless, of course, you choose to omit ids from your urls, then you're royally screwed). From there, vB5 should do the further redirect I think.

[bridge2heyday]

You can easily 301 redirect to the new content URLs , even if you don't use ids in your url , you can use a small workaround to match url_ident .. it is not the perfect solution but just working fine .

[cellarius]

Please explain. How do you redirect old thread urls without an id (without doing every thread manually, of course)?

[bridge2heyday]

Well , this will require one or two file edits
in file 'includes/vb5/frontend/routing.php'
line 239 just before throwing

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I have made some work
I used $path variable , exploded it and got the last element .. then queried node table for urlident equal to this value .
if true .. this returns node id
Then

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I did this for a client who converted from smf with pretty URLs and working fine
I will post the full code when I have access to my home PC tomorrow.
Note : if the URL doesn't end with '/' you have to do additional work in includes\api\interface\collapsed.php'

[Paul M]

What exactly do you mean by "the urlident" ?

[Replicant]

Originally Posted by Paul M

What exactly do you mean by "the urlident" ?

That would be the urlident column in the node table. It contains the hyphenated version of the text portion of the url and can be used successfully many times to compare to seo pretty urls.....

[t-h-c]

Excellent thank you very much bridge2heyday it worked!!

Final problem though...as this is on a main domain ie domain.com/forum how do we prevent it creating /forum/forum, I noticed even does this on VB site this is the final hurdle.

[Replicant]

Originally Posted by t-h-c

Excellent thank you very much bridge2heyday it worked!!

Final problem though...as this is on a main domain ie domain.com/forum how do we prevent it creating /forum/forum, I noticed even does this on VB site this is the final hurdle.

You can change the URL in site builder for each. I did this on my forum. It may seem like a lot of work, but after you have done a few, they go quickly. I think I have like 60 forums and sub forums and it took like 1 - 1 1/2 hours to change all the urls.

[bridge2heyday]

Originally Posted by Replicant

That would be the urlident column in the node table. It contains the hyphenated version of the text portion of the url and can be used successfully many times to compare to seo pretty urls.....

Exactly

[cellarius]

Originally Posted by Replicant

That would be the urlident column in the node table. It contains the hyphenated version of the text portion of the url and can be used successfully many times to compare to seo pretty urls.....

Ah, that's specific to vB5. I'm not really familiar with that version. For vB4 I would stick to my royally screwed thesis, though

[bridge2heyday]

Originally Posted by t-h-c

Excellent thank you very much bridge2heyday it worked!!

Final problem though...as this is on a main domain ie domain.com/forum how do we prevent it creating /forum/forum, I noticed even does this on VB site this is the final hurdle.

Thanks ,
you have something installed in the root of your site ?
and you have your forum installed in sub directory /forum ?
anyway,
I will give you a scenario where I have forums installed in subdir /forums

assume you have domain www.domain.com
and vbulletin at www.domain.com/forums

in your admincp change vBulletin URL to www.domain.com instead of www.domain.com/forums
and then use this .htaccess

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Tricky but working fine

Note : this will not work if your directory is /forum , you can rename in that case

--------------- Added 17 Jun 2016 at 14:29 ---------------

Originally Posted by cellarius

Ah, that's specific to vB5. I'm not really familiar with that version. For vB4 I would stick to my royally screwed thesis, though

Yes , we are in vb5 discussion forum

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by bridge2heyday

Yes , we are in vb5 discussion forum

True, however your question was about vB4 to vB5, so somewhat relevant to vB4 as well.