XF 1.5 Best way to make the transition

dking

Member
Okay folks I have been reading thread after thread and I need some guidance on next step to production.

I have a production site that is on VB4.2 with VBgallery, VB Pro Garage and VBSEO. The location of the forum is in the /forum directory.

This is what I have done so far,
1. Created a test location /test
2. Installed Xenforo in /test
3. Imported the current production DB & images (roughly 300k)
4. Worked with a Xenforo Dev to create the theme I wanted
5. Made permission / feature changes I wanted
6. Installed Showcase
7. Installed Media
8. Installed Xenforo Advanced Search <------ AWESOME!

I now have a test site that I think is good enough to put into production, I already know I have some redirect issues going on so that is going to be another thing to deal with but what are my options now.. I am really not sure which way to go,

  • Do I reimport the data?
  • If I do a reimport what are the consequences, do I lose all the settings and permissions that I changed
If this was your forum, (I know I know you code guys would have never been in this spot) what would you do now? Your experiences, knowledge and input is key to what I do next.

thanks folks,
 
Thanks Jake, of course I want to do the right thing... Lets define what we mean by reinstall, are we talking about re-uploading and starting over from scratch... No way to keep the settings that I have now is really what I am hearing, thats okay I can leave this test site up and just reference it...

I can tell you that I was pleasantly surprised to see you post a reply, I have been reading post on Xenforo all week on rewrite rules and have come across several threads in which you posted... I guarantee that I will have issues in a few days!

Thank you for the guidance!
 
Thanks Jake, of course I want to do the right thing... Lets define what we mean by reinstall, are we talking about re-uploading and starting over from scratch... No way to keep the settings that I have now is really what I am hearing, thats okay I can leave this test site up and just reference it...

Yeah... from scratch. Then use the test install as a reference.
 
Okay so the site is online and about 90% functional, I have some feature settings still to make and some template adjustments but the core is functional and working. Thank you guys for sticking around and offering some suggestions from your experiences.. My big goal now is to figure out mod_rewrite,

thanks again!

your involvement and followup is one reason I made the move to xenforo, I've been lurking for some time and YOU are what makes the difference...
 
Well in my limited knowledge I fixed one of the issues (Go me) but the others I am going to have to get someone to help... I have a lot of history on the site (about 17 years now) and a lot of other forums going back to ikonboard... My problem in front of me now is that Google Webmaster is starting to complain about it.. They are sending me bot emails :)

I can see the gallery from Vbgallery is an issue and also attachments, a couple of examples..

What google is showing
/gallery/showimage.php?i=1699&catid=newimages


What google is showing - If I click on the link it downloads the file to my computer! So this has to be something else... I just checked and they all seem to be quicktime movies that have been posted over time, weird.
/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=176649&d=1266019552
 
What google is showing - If I click on the link it downloads the file to my computer! So this has to be something else... I just checked and they all seem to be quicktime movies that have been posted over time, weird.
/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=176649&d=1266019552

Redirecting attachment.php is handled by these redirect scripts:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/vbulletin-4-x-url-redirection.120/


That is something else. Can you provide both the old and new URL for that specific page? Specifically I want to know if the ids are the same in which case a rewriterule will suffice.
 
You guys are crazy responsive... thank you for that! I have a mess on my hands and I think it is from years of moving from forum to forum and add on etc.. I have the redirect scripts in place but some of the content like the gallery I don't have anymore and that is a large portion of the errors in my crawl stats. I have many of the redirect working and I am trying to sort them out now... I am going to make request for the old URL's to go away and try to clean things up and then see what I have left..

I appreciate you guys...
 
@dking

Add these rules to the top of the .htaccess file in your /forum directory:

Code:
RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^[^/]+/([0-9]+)-[^\.]+\.html$ /forum/showthread.php?t=$1 [R=301,L]

That will handle the old friendly thread URLs.

The forum URL doesn't contain an id so that can't be easily redirected.

Do you have a new sitemap you want to use?
 
Jake, two things...
1. what is the difference in the one you just gave me and the one I have put in already?
Mine
RewriteRule [^/]+/([\d]+)-.+-([\d]+).html showthread.php?t=$1&page=$2 [NC,L]

Yours
RewriteRule ^[^/]+/([0-9]+)-[^\.]+\.html$ /forum/showthread.php?t=$1 [R=301,L]

2. I have just about everything working now, I think I am down to one small redirect right now...

I can't get this one to work:

forum/recent-activity/
 
The rules are similar, but mine designates the start of the URI (^), uses an alternative method of specifying numbers, and properly escapes the period (\.). But your rule handles page numbers while mine does not.

In the forum directory:

Code:
RewriteRule ^recent-activity /newlocation/ [R=301,L]
 
Got a little issue with redirect attachments after upgrading to xf2.

domain.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=33928

did not redirect to the xf2 attach after upgrade.

In .htaccess I have this:

Code:
RewriteRule ^attachments/(.+)/([0-9]+)[d-](.+)$ attachment.php?attachmentid=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^attachments/(.+)/([0-9]+)[d-](.+)$ attachment.php?attachmentid=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^attachments/(.+)/(.+)_([0-9]+)\.([a-zA-Z0-9]+)$ attachment.php?attachmentid=$3 [L]

Any suggestion how to get it work again?
 
Ok, attachments working now.

But I need a redirect for this one:

domain.com/forum/attachments/kuechenplanung-im-planungs-board/87322d1343161271-hausneubau-und-schwierige-frage-der-kueche-grundriss-eg.jpg

to

domain.com/forum/attachments/87322/

The first one seems to be an old vBSEO URL for attachments and it works with the redirect scripts for XF1, but not in XF2.

Is there a solution?

Thanks
 
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