XF 1.5 Merging multiple forums.

[Okenyon]

To cut a long story short.

We owned a forum called cpafix.

Two years ago we changed its name to affiliatefix (I'm guessing @Slavik setup redirects).

Now two years on we've just purchased another 2 forums to merge into affiliatefix.

Whats the best way to handle this?

I think I'm right in saying we can only redirect one forum (cpafix) ?

Is there anyway we can merge the data and keep the link juices flowing?

Thanks.

 

[Mike]

You can merge multiple forums into one; you just can't maintain their IDs. That's where redirect scripts from the old URLs are needed (once that map the IDs as well). When you finish the import, you'll need to archive the import log to a unique name for each import and then have the redirect scripts read from that import log.

It'll be worth trying it out on a test/backup installation first to get an idea of what's going to happen.

 

[Okenyon]

Thanks @Mike - what would be the steps AFTER the scrips are installed as far as sitemaps etc and letting the big G know about thing?

 

[Mr Lucky]

You shouldn't need to do anything as the redirect scripts will be followed by Google who will sooner or later reindex and drop the old URLs. Once Google has picked everything up, the redirects are only then needed for any links from external sites to the old ones. If you had any pages outside of xenForo (e.g. home page portal, then you just need individual redirects for those pages.

It may be inevitable that a teeny bit of link juice is lost due to redirects.

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