Migration from VB 3.8 with VBSEO to xenFORO

[capflam]

Hi,

VB is not what it used to be and I am trying to find a more temporary solution to my forum counting about 70k users.
My main concerns are:
1. Can I implement easily or import me VBSEO settings to xenforo?
2. I use VBexperience and my users like it. Is there a similar plugin in xenFORO?
3. I want to make sure that my users can login to our forums just like they are used to with VB. No new registration and such.
4. Do you guys have a mobile app?

Thanks in advance, it would be a great help if you could help me make sense of this potential migration.

 

[Mike]

Thanks. So that works even though VBSEO was installed?

1. I read the information above and some other threads but I may have missed something:
My VBSEO settings limit the number of words in the URL to 3, plus I have some stop words.
Given this, is it still possible to redirect accurately?

Both of these roughly have the same answer.

The redirects we provide only redirect the standard URLs. With VBSEO in place, you need redirects back to the standard URLs. If you have IDs in the URL, this is generally straightforward: http://tools.geekpoint.net/xfseo/ If you don't have IDs in the URL, then generally you would need to write individual/custom redirects for each entry.

 

[Paul B]

Regarding point 1, it makes no difference with regards to the redirection.

There is no equivalent feature in XenForo though.

 

[capflam]

@Mike @Brogan thanks, I used the tool as I have IDs:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule [^/]+/.+-t([\d]+)-([\d]+).html showthread.php?t=$1&page=$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule [^/]+/.+-t([\d]+).html showthread.php?t=$1 [NC,L]

So that means that my URLs get redirected to the non-friendly Xenforo URLs if I am reading this correctly.
So based on the fact that I have a maximum of 3 words in URLs and a few common stop words this isn't going to be easy to redirect to the friendly Xenforo URLs (for me at least, maybe someone else can).

I forgot to ask if attachments are redirected as well?

 

[Mike]

You did ask the attachment question: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/migration-from-vb-3-8-with-vbseo-to-xenforo.71764/#post-927847 If the tool didn't generate redirects, you'll need a rule that will redirect them back to attachment.php but if there are IDs, that should be straightforward enough.

I'm not really sure what you're discussing with the 3 words in URLs and stop words comment; if the URLs can be redirected to the "native" URLs, then the redirects you can download from our resources section will work.

 

[capflam]

Hi,
I should have been more clear:

1. Attachments:
yes I asked but I didn't specify that these attachments are also rewritten with VBSEO. Links are not the typical attachment.php with query parameters. So I need to redirect these mod_rewrite links as well.
Is there a known solution for that?

2. About the 3 words max in URLs:
That was a confusing part on my end, sorry about that. What I meant is that what it does is 2 redirects, 1 to redirect to the old unfriendly VB links, then 1 to the new Xenforo links.
I wanted to ask if a more direct approach is possible with only 1 redirect instead of 2.
The complicated part on my end is that words in URLs will not match because I have a maximum of 3 words in it.
So for example, for a thread title that is "my thread title is here" I have /my-thread-title-t123456.html and this will become /my-thread-title-is-here.123456/ with Xenforo.
Hope this clarifies stuff.

 

[Ridemonkey]

I think you're overcomplicating this.

If the ID of the thread/post/attachment/whatever is in the URL, you can directly point it to XenForo's new ID. No matter what, whether it's a parameter on a .php file, or a SEO-friendly URL with keywords.

Also, you don't need to redirect to "friendly" URLs. XenForo will do this on its own. You can test it on this site: go to https://xenforo.com/community/threads/71764/ - you'll get pointed right to this thread, SEO-friendly URL and all. You don't have to worry about what the old SEO-friendly URL looked like, or match it to the new SEO-friendly URL.

In your example, you'd just use your rewrite rule to point /my-thread-title-t123456.html to /threads/123456/ and XenForo will take care of the rest on its own. Google will index the SEO-friendly URLs.

 

[capflam]

Thanks @Ridemonkey , maybe I do.
But this is 2 redirects then, including one that's incorrect: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/71764/ is redirecting but returns an HTTP 200 response code instead of a 301.
This isn't good for SEO as it could be misinterpreted by search engines.
The 200 response code states that the page exists, creating eventually a duplicate between https://xenforo.com/community/threads/71764/ and https://xenforo.com/community/threads/migration-from-vb-3-8-with-vbseo-to-xenforo.71764/. Both are technically said to be 200 valid without 301 permanent redirect from the search engine standpoint.
I had to deal with something similar years ago and ended up being a nightmare.

Am I missing something?

 

[Jeremy P]

@capflam Those redirects are returning 301 Moved Permanently.

$ wget https://xenforo.com/community/threads/71764/
--2015-04-26 17:33:58--  https://xenforo.com/community/threads/71764/
Resolving xenforo.com (xenforo.com)... 184.173.238.122
Connecting to xenforo.com (xenforo.com)|184.173.238.122|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/migration-from-vb-3-8-with-vbseo-to-xenforo.71764/ [following]

And XenForo includes canonical metadata in the HTML to make sure search engines know the canonical URL, even if it weren't redirected.

 

[capflam]

Weird, everywhere I was trying I got:
Requesting http://xenforo.com/community/threads/71764/
SERVER RESPONSE: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date:
Mon, 27 Apr 2015 00:39:51 GMT
Server:
Apache
Expires:
Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-control:
private, max-age=0
Set-Cookie:
xf_session=68d22fd8434c54c5b9bff1b27d8e2f4a; path=/; httponly
X-Frame-Options:
SAMEORIGIN
Last-Modified:
Mon, 27 Apr 2015 00:39:51 GMT
Content-Length:
77972
Content-Type:
text/html; charset=UTF-8


Anyway in this case there isn't any problem for me then.

 

[Jeremy P]

From a browser? I know of at least Chrome that caches redirects, not sure if that would affect anything or confuse the built-in network inspector.

I can't seem to get anything other than a 301 using wget or curl from the command line.

 

[capflam]

I was using PHP tools including those that mimic Googlebot. They were all reading the page as if a 301 never existed.
I wish I could triple check that Google actually understands that there is a 301. Pretty critical to me and I am so new to Xenforo that I don't know exactly how it works.

 

[Jeremy P]

@capflam You're in luck
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/googlebot-fetch

I'm definitely still getting a 301 for those redirects.

 

[capflam]

Ahhhh good point! Thanks @Jeremy P

(I really love this @ feature in posts by the way )

 

[Ridemonkey]

Anecdotally, as someone with all of those redirects in place from VBSEO, I can tell you that all our search results show the SEO friendly URLs. If the URLs were returning 200 OK, it would index the /thread/id/ links as valid.

Of course, checking with the Google tools is the real proof

 

[capflam]

I very much appreciate you sharing this.
I was looking as your forums, your forums seem to be a bit larger than mine. Did you loose any activity or revenue when you switched?
Nice design by the way.

 

[Ridemonkey]

I very much appreciate you sharing this.
I was looking as your forums, your forums seem to be a bit larger than mine. Did you loose any activity or revenue when you switched?
Nice design by the way.

Thanks!

It's actually a little hard to quantify. First, the spam blockers are so much better. I saw a dramatic drop-off in registrations and posts which were both directly attributable to spam that was no longer showing up. From what I could measure, it looked like I only lost spam, not actual users or content. Second, there are a lot more popups/overlays/etc. on XF, so pageviews are going to naturally drop by a small amount. Especially when you consider VB's "interstitial" pages ("thanks, we're taking you to your content now...").

Our organic search hits went down a bit, which could be attributable to a number of things. I changed the posts per page from 20 to 40. Consolidated some of our forums. Purged some old content. Our old classifieds system went away. And frankly, the spam that was getting through (profile spam, especially) may well have been contributing to traffic.

Engagement is up, though. User session duration up. Number of likes is through the roof (the migration happened about halfway through this chart, you can see the instant spike):



Frankly, as much as anything, the site is just better now. Metrics and measurables aside... the mobile view of XF is so much better than the mediocre and crippled mobile skin of VB4. The administration of the site is so much better that it's hard to even express how much. My users liked it, and I have a somewhat vocal userbase that hates change so that speaks volumes .

Hope that helps.

 

[capflam]

Thank you for the info. It's great to have honest feedback from webmasters who went through what I am about to go through.

I have to admit that the multiple 301 redirects scare me from the search engine standpoint: VBSEO urls > basic VB urls > not friendly Xenforo urls > friendly Xenforo urls. <- this is actually how it happens right?

Also, is there a way to have a "logical structure" like /forum name/thread instead of having all threads at the root of the forum?


I start to get lost in my own thoughts now . I am moving away from VB though, that's for sure.

 

[Ridemonkey]

You have an extra step in there. The VBSEO URLs are redirected immediately into the "not friendly" Xenforo URLs. There is no basic VB URL in the middle.

Google doesn't actually care; when it hits the last 301 in the series, that's the page that gets indexed.

I don't know about structuring your forum routes that way, to be honest.

Digital Point had a good writeup on their transition as well:
https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/one-month-after-switching-from-vbulletin-to-xenforo.2637721/

 

[Blackbeard]

I know this is old, but any idea how we could get htaccess info since http://tools.geekpoint.net/xfseo/ is no longer up.

 

[Slavik]

I know this is old, but any idea how we could get htaccess info since http://tools.geekpoint.net/xfseo/ is no longer up.

Theyre all relatively standard redirects, all that tool did was select the right ones from a pre-determined list. If you have the URL pattern and need a redirect post a thread and im sure someone can come up with something / has the right one to hand.