Migration from vb4 +vbSEO

[MrCranky]

I'm literally on the cusp of buying the licence for Xenforo, just waiting for a tiny bit more of that adsense £ to roll in.

So my current site is running on some pretty outdated stuff (don't judge)

w2k8 host with vb4 and vbseo enabled.

What would be the best way to move to Xenforo, I want to move to a Linux VPS.

Should I upgrade the site on the current host in situ to XF then migrate to a new host, or setup from fresh and migrate all the data? I have been reading the manuals for XF and XF Importer and have a few questions about the fresh start route.

Is the importer able to read from a remote database? I can open up the current database to the IP of the new host for the move.

As It will be located on a new server, the path's to the attachments wont exist, they are currently in the file system not database. Can I move the attachments folder to a location on the new server and point the migrator at that?

Also URL redirects, currently my install is at the root level, so domain.com/ and with vbSEO enabled, the nodes are accessible via domain.com/friendly-node-name is it possible to retain this? I see the default for XF domain.com/forums/node-name.ID# I have thousands of posts and around 5000 members, so would like to retain as much as possible.

 

[djbaxter]

You will need to redirect the vBSEO links (link structure). The first step is to identify which vBSEO link structure you are currently using so you can redirect those to the native vBulletin SEO friendly URLs or the Xenforo SEO friendly URLs.

Which version of vB4 are you running? And what are your vBSEO settings for rewriting links?

 

[MrCranky]

vb 4.2.1 and the default vbseo settings I believe:
Current Preset: 001 - Hierarchic .html type URLs with content relevant forums and threads (Default Settings)

-----

Forum:
[forum_title]/

Threads:
[forum_title]/[thread_id]-[thread_title].html

 

[djbaxter]

vBSEO is definitely a bit of a nightmare and one problem is there's no one-size-fits-all solution since there were, if I recall, about 5 different options for vBSEO'd URLs.

Check out these resources:

How to uninstall vBSEO - Blogs - vBulletin SEO Forums

How to uninstall vBSEO Mert Gökçeimam

web.archive.org

Redirecting URLs after uninstalling vBSEO - vBulletin Community Forum

After a recent security intrusion into the vbseo cache plugin, I uninstalled vBSEO entirely. Now I expect to take a temporary hit in Google and Bing until the reindex the site. I also know this is not a

forum.vbulletin.com

Uninstalled VBSEO, need rewrite help - vBulletin Community Forum

I just uninstalled VBSEO and need some help with rewrite rules in .htaccess getting my old indexed url's to redirect to the standard vb urls. I got my threads

forum.vbulletin.com

Removing VBSEO For Vbulletin 4 - Reverting Back To Vbulletin URLs

After uninstallation you can also redirect your indexed content to original vBulletin urls. Please carefully check the rewrite rules and use the one that fits

www.rivmedia.co.uk

Remove vBSEO and redirect url's with permanant 301 redirects. - Forum Hosting and Internet Marketing Blog

Remove vBSEO, make you forum more secure and redirect your urls's with permanant 301 redirects.

www.urljet.com

And for managing the redirects in Xenforo:

Redirects for vBSEO'd URLs

UPDATE: I've uploaded the script at: http://tools.geekpoint.net/xfseo/, with the ability to upload your own XML backup file and have the tool generate rewrite/redirect rules for you (in case you are not using a preset). Let me know if you encounter any errors while using the rewrite rules or...

xenforo.com

XF 2.1 - Redirecting thread URLs

Manual states:... using the XenForo redirects for vBulletin add-on, which started shipping with XenForo from version 2.0.2. ... https://xenforo.com/xf2-docs/manual/import-notes-vbulletin/#xenforo-redirects-for-vbulletin I've just installed XF 2.1 and I don't see this add-on. The only add-on...

xenforo.com

Your best bet might be to get the URL rewrites working in vBulletin (using .htaccess rewrite rules) and then do the import to Xenforo - but keep that working .htaccess file so you can keep the vBSEO rewrites in the .htaccess probably before any Xenforo rewrites or the Xenforo redirect addon kicks in.

 

[Kirby]

vBSEO is definitely a bit of a nightmare and one problem is there's no one-size-fits-all solution since there were, if I recall, about 5 different options for vBSEO'd URLs.

As vBSEO also allowed to define custom rules there are infinity+1 possible formats.

We've implemented a custom error handler which does allows us to do flexible URL handling via a "Redirection Kernel" and microdrivers (such as for vBSEO) to handle such situations like vBSEO URLs that do not contain an ID.

 

[MrCranky]

Think I'll just have to redirect all 404's to the main page then and be glad vbSEO is gone.

 

[djbaxter]

You'll lose a lot of indexed links that way, though.

 

[MrCranky]

You'll lose a lot of indexed links that way, though.

I'll have to do a bit more reading, but if they are going to break anyway by removing vbSEO I may as well just move to XF?

 

[djbaxter]

Yes, IMO you should move to XF anyway but you can mitigate losing the indexed URLs by getting the redirects right first. vB4 is 10 years old and end of life and no one wants to be on vB5.

 

[MrCranky]

Yes, IMO you should move to XF anyway but you can mitigate losing the indexed URLs by getting the redirects right first. vB4 is 10 years old and end of life and no one wants to be on vB5.

Thanks, It's been a while since I played with ReWritesetc, so no doubt bodge it up.

 

[djbaxter]

I'm sure this community can assist you.

 

[katoona]

I have the same issue, and I have set forum re-writes to Default settings in VBseo (no custom settings):

001 - Hierarchic .html type URLs with content relevant forums and threads (Default Settings)

In Advanced settings I see that all rewrites are set to

[forum_title]/[thread_id] xxxxxxxx

Since this is the most basic setup of VBseo - will I face any problems when migrating to Xenforo? I guess what I am asking - does anybody have a guide for me to follow?