XF 1.5 Suffering from 404 Errors After Migrated from VBulletin 5

bibitbunga

bibitbunga

Active member
Hi all

My forum is www.kebunpedia.com, and right now we are suffering from terrible issue: 404 not found everywhere, literally :(

We just moved from VBulletin 5 (there was a lot of bugs and errors) to XenForo.

Our users can not be any happier that this decision has made, obviously XF is loved by everyone!

But uh oh, I have a problem with the old url and can do nothing about that. The urls and index from VB5 are soo complicated and I do not find any solution to redirect all my urls in Google Search Console.

As a result, we got dropped in search clicks and might be in Google Ranking. We do not rank any more in certain keywords due to the 404 error. All is error if they come from google. Here is the screenshoot from Google:

bad1.webp

And I used Four oh Four addon to help better 404 detection, here is the result:

bad2.webp

I have been stressed out for 3 days now.. I read at Google that 404s do not hurt my site but what happened if all urls in my site are not found aka Big Problem of 404 errors :(

Please help me, please help suggest the way out of this problem..

Thank you a lot..
 
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Jake Bunce said:
To be certain I need you to provide some example old and new URLs for forums, threads, and members.

Was vB installed in the web root? I can XF currently is.
Click to expand...
Yes vBulletin was installed in the web root, like how XF is installed now. I just replaced the VB system to XF system.

Okay here are some examples of the old and new URL for:

-forums
will it be significant and we are able to redirect if I delete the old forums and adding some new forums (completely change the forum structure) after we moved in XF? Therefore there might be a lot of not found of forums because I just delete it and add to new forum..
Click to expand...

-threads
/forum/berbagi-pengalaman/415-ask-menyemai-benih-mint-di-dataran-rendah-dan-berapa-lama?p=1266
to:
/threads/ask-menyemai-benih-mint-di-dataran-rendah-dan-berapa-lama.22/

or..

/forum/chit-chat/23170-tukeran-benih-yuk
to:
/threads/tukeran-benih-yuk.1088/
Click to expand...

-members
/member/505-soeharto
to:
/members/soeharto.503/

or....

/member/271-bluelotus
to:
/members/bluelotus.270/

I have no idea why the ID from 505 changing to 503 , or 271 to 270 o_O
Click to expand...

Thank you
 
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Ok. For your thread / member redirects...

...add these rules to the top of the .htaccess file in your web root:

Code: 
RewriteEngine On

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

Then upload these redirect scripts to your web root:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/redirection-scripts-for-vbulletin-3-x.264/

You might need to edit the 301config.php file to specify the name of your import_log table in the XF database. This table is usually named one of these things:

archived_import_log
xf_import_log

Note that I didn't include any rule for your forum redirects. Your forum URLs don't appear to use ids so a generic redirect is not possible. But the important thing is threads.
 
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EDITED: some works flawless! some redirected to homepage. Great Job thank you @Jake Bunce

===================

Thanks for your reply @Jake Bunce

I have done these steps:

1. implemented your code to my htaccess (top above all other code),
2. download the zip file of redirection scripts for vbulletin 3x264
3. unzip to my hard drive
4. upload all the extracted files (include 1 folder) to public_html root
5. change the 301config.php ->> the part I changed is shown in the picture below:

301config.webp

As my database has xf_import_log in it.

And I have tested, the result is all the 404 error redirected back to home www.kebunpedia.com

They all redirect to homepage, not to proper new url.. what have I missed?

Thank you..
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hey, it works well now! Only some threads url that redirected to the homepage. This does not matter a lot. I do not know why are some thread urls redirected to homepage, but @Jake Bunce you really really help me out here.

Thank you for saving my life. Appreciate the XF staffs, you are awesome!
 
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In that situation the only worry is that you might be using the wrong import_log table. Look for other log tables that might be more complete. Normally the name will be one of these:

archived_import_log
xf_import_log
 
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bibitbunga said:
so there's nothing to do about it? if so then I have done my best, hopefully Google will not penalize my site :D
Click to expand...

You should be fine. The main issues are external links pointing to individual pages and internal links pointing to individual pages (usually threads).

Once you have both redirecting via 301 all is fine but can be improved because Google does take away a bit of a link's value when it is redirected.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

So even now jake has done a great job on the 301s I would recommend you try to search out internal redirects and manually change them (Can be a big job) No big deal if you don't but it may help a bit.

Same with external links to your site. ideally contact the site owner and ask for them to change it to the correct page.

I can always take time for Google to pick up the new URL, so don't panic if it takes weeks or even months.

One useful tool I recently found was this xenforo dead link remover:

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/dead-link-management-paid.96404/

It will can remove any dead links from your site. Not crucial but it can make a better user experience which is, as we know, a big plus in Google.

It will also help you identify an dead (404) internal links (must fix these) and internal 301s (ideally fix as above)
 
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Mr Lucky said:
You should be fine. The main issues are external links pointing to individual pages and internal links pointing to individual pages (usually threads).

Once you have both redirecting via 301 all is fine but can be improved because Google does take away a bit of a link's value when it is redirected.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

So even now jake has done a great job on the 301s I would recommend you try to search out internal redirects and manually change them (Can be a big job) No big deal if you don't but it may help a bit.

Same with external links to your site. ideally contact the site owner and ask for them to change it to the correct page.

I can always take time for Google to pick up the new URL, so don't panic if it takes weeks or even months.

One useful tool I recently found was this xenforo dead link remover:

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/dead-link-management-paid.96404/

It will can remove any dead links from your site. Not crucial but it can make a better user experience which is, as we know, a big plus in Google.

It will also help you identify an dead (404) internal links (must fix these) and internal 301s (ideally fix as above)
Click to expand...
Thank you a lot i will definitely check the dead link management tools. Thank you a lot :D

Jake Bunce said:
In that situation the only worry is that you might be using the wrong import_log table. Look for other log tables that might be more complete. Normally the name will be one of these:

archived_import_log
xf_import_log
Click to expand...
I have ctrl+F "import_log" in my phpmyadmin and found out it is the only one. I have used that. so no better luck for me eh. But it is very lucky to have solution from you thank you very much
 
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@Jake Bunce Hope you can help

Having problems too here, after a VB 3.8 import to XenForo.

My XF Forum is now on the same url I used to use for my VB forum:
http://www.cancuncare.com/forum/

Once I went live with XF I moved the VB forum to:
http://www.cancuncare.com/oldforum/

I did create an import log table but I don't know how to reference it, or where it is located. I did download the VB 3.8 redirection script and uploaded it to the new VB location. All my old url's are giving 404's

Example 1 for a thread:
Old url:
http://www.cancuncare.com/forum/temptation-resort-cancun/32952-october-2015-roll-call.html

Equivalent new XF url:
http://www.cancuncare.com/forum/threads/october-2015-roll-call.32952/

Example 2 for specific forum:

Old url:
http://www.cancuncare.com/forum/temptation-resort-cancun/

New url:
http://www.cancuncare.com/forum/forums/temptation-resort-cancun.11/
 
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Steve8383 said:
As a second question, sorry!

Taking my new url:

http://www.cancuncare.com/forum/forums/temptation-resort-cancun.11/

How could I change the url to replace 'forum/forums' to just 'forum' and remove the '.11'

Is it possible to set up a url that reads:
http://www.cancuncare.com/forum/temptation-resort-cancun
Click to expand...

"forums" is the route in that case. You can rename a route but not remove it.

The id can be removed from a forum URL by specify a node name:

Admin CP -> Applications -> Display Node Tree -> [click the node] -> URL Portion
 
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