XF 2.2 100+ of 404 pages /attachment.php?attachmentid=xxx

[Anatoliy]

So I scanned my site with Site Audit tool from Ahrefs and among other things I discovered 100+ of links from other sites that point to non-existing attachments. So my domain is losing a lot of referring pages and PR juice from them. Of course, I'd like to fix that.

The links look like mydomain/attachment.php?attachmentid=xxx or mydomain/attachment.php?attachmentid=xxx&d=yyy. I visited some referer sites and they are my member's blogs at blogspot.com (posts are from 2014). I guess my move from Vb4 to Vb5 was somewhere at that time. Or maybe I changed my hosting provider...

What would be a proper way to fix this problem? Creating 100+ of 301 redirects? Is there a more efficient way?
Thanks in advance.

edited: thank God it's 100+ not 1k as I thought and posted before. )

 

[Paul B]

Do the attachments actually exist in XF?

If not just do a single rewrite rule to capture all of them and redirect to a URL of your choice.

 

[Anatoliy]

Do the attachments actually exist in XF?

I don't know. And don't know how to check if they are.
I created 301 redirects using Custom 404 add-on.
Is having 100 redirects bad for a forum performance?

 

[Paul B]

Is having 100 redirects bad for a forum performance?

No.

Thousands, possibly.

Do Redirects Impact the Speed of Your Website? | Matthew Edgar

In short, yes. There are two ways redirects can affect speed: adding to the server overhead or delaying the load of the page. Discover the data-driven conclusion.

www.matthewedgar.net

However, as you don't know where to redirect each specific attachment URL, just use a single rewrite.

 

[Anatoliy]

Thanks!