XF 1.5 3 questions on Merging 2 Xenforo Installations

[DPF]

I recently acquired one of my competitors and will be rolling their site in to mine. I have a few questions regarding this process. I'll be testing it first to make sure it works, but just want to seek advice from those who have done it already also to save some time.

1. Do both installs need to be at the same version?
2. Should I disable all addons before importing?
3. How can I handle redirects from the old domain to my new domain given everything will be given new ID's and URL's, if possible.

thanks

 

[Paul B]

1. No.
2. It makes no difference - add-on content is not imported and add-on functionality won't affect the importer.
3. You will need redirection scripts - I don't believe anyone has written any for XF.

 

[andybond]

3. How can I handle redirects from the old domain to my new domain given everything will be given new ID's and URL's, if possible.

thanks

Why not use a .htaccess redirect to bump the users from the newly acquired site ?

 

[Jeremy]

Why not use a .htaccess redirect to bump the users from the newly acquired site ?

Simple htaccess redirects will not work because the content has a new ID, which will need to be fetched.

 

[andybond]

Simple htaccess redirects will not work because the content has a new ID, which will need to be fetched.

Hence my suggestion for the simplistic htaccess. Will save some headaches

 

[DPF]

Why not use a .htaccess redirect to bump the users from the newly acquired site ?

I know I can simply 301 redirect from the old site to the new, but how can I set it up so if someone was visiting a thread on the old site it redirects them to the same thread on the new site? The threads will have different IDs and URLs?

 

[andybond]

You could import the old site data in to the new site , forums , threads , users , messages et al onto the new site.

Then just use a .htaccess for the old site to the new site.

 

[Paul B]

You could import the old site data in to the new site , forums , threads , users , messages et al onto the new site.

That's what he plans to do.

Then just use a .htaccess for the old site to the new site.

That won't help with existing links - hence why we have said redirection scripts are required.

 

[andybond]

That won't help with existing links - hence why we have said redirection scripts are required.

< penny drops >

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

 

[DPF]

Thanks for the help anyway Andybond!

I'll just eat the SEO hit for the short while. The other site doesn't get a ton of traffic anyway and probably isn't worth developing/investing a ton of time in to.

 

[Mouth]

My suggestion;
After import, leave the acquired site in read-only and non-registration mode with a big notice telling visitors that all activity is now at your new site with its URL. If you import the acquired site forums into new categories, your URL in the notice could even go directly to the category containing the forums.

 

[Jake B.]

2. It makes no difference - add-on content is not imported and add-on functionality won't affect the importer.

Some add-ons do. A few of our add-ons support importing from a vBulletin equivalent

 

[Paul B]

Obviously we can't comment on third party add-ons and importers.
We can only provide answers as they pertain to core code and functionality.

 

[marcv]

Just found this thread. I have the same exact issue. We acquired a XF website and want to import into ours without losing all the SEO and links all over the web. I was surprised that redirection scripts were available for a few forums but not for XF itself. Any plans on adding this for us users that are merging XF sites together?

Thank you.

 

[DPF]

Just found this thread. I have the same exact issue. We acquired a XF website and want to import into ours without losing all the SEO and links all over the web. I was surprised that redirection scripts were available for a few forums but not for XF itself. Any plans on adding this for us users that are merging XF sites together?

Thank you.

I'd imagine it would be extremely difficult to implement with little benefit. I was able to merge the sites together and SEO wasn't really an issue without the redirects.

Make sure you have google webmaster tools enabled for both domains
Submit a site map after the merge
Redirect all traffic from old site to a new page with a search bar.
Inform users content has moved but feel free to search for it.

Worked wonders for us, hopefully that can help you also.

 

[marcv]

I just did a test run of the import. Most went ok but I see one issue already.

Within a post when somebody links to another thread within the old forum it doesn't update to the new URL hostname let alone the mapped ID on the receiving forum.

Is the importer supposed to grep through posts and do a replace with the importing sites hostname and the new correct post or thread id?

If not, what is the best solution to this problem. There are 1000's of links on the acquired site pointing to posts/threads within its own website. If these are not converted or mapped/redirected they all lead nowhere once the acquired site is taken offline. Leaving the acquired site online defeats the purpose so that is not really an option.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Paul B]

Is the importer supposed to grep through posts and do a replace with the importing sites hostname and the new correct post or thread id?

No, post content is imported as is.

You would have to manually update the post content or implement redirection.

 

[jb-net]

I'm in the same situation. Is there any news about a redirect script?