XF 1.5 VBulletin 3.8 with VBSeo redirect problems

Steve8383

Member
I moved my vbulletin 3.8 to xf about a week ago. My vb install has vbseo installed. The vbseo setting is 1.

Spent four days on this and not getting very far, I've read pretty much every thread on the subject. I now feel like the proverbial monkey with a typewriter, trying everything at random until something works. Traffic is down by 50% likely due to links from search engines ending up at error pages.

This is what I have done:

- XF is installed in 'domain.com/forum' directory and working, which was the location of VB. I have moved VB to 'domain.com/oldforum'. The vb forum is working in it's new location as before.

- I downloaded the vb 3.x redirection scripts and uploaded them to the server. I wasn't sure if I should upload to the xf location 'forum' (because it was the old vb location) or the new vb location 'oldforum'. Tried both, but neither has worked. I referenced my archive import log in 301config.php as instructed.

- I used the tool at http://tools.geekpoint.net/xfseo/ to generate extra htaccess code for vbseo and put this in my htaccess. Again, wasn't sure if this should be in the current xf htaccess (because it was the old vb location) or the new vb htaccess location. Tried both, but neither has worked.

- I manually added 301 redirects to the root htaccess to redirect forum home links i.e. http://domain.com/forum/forumname these are working fine.

I did make a previous forum post on this, but neglected to mention I was using vbseo, so the suggestion didn't work.

Completely out of ideas now, and desperate :)
 
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@Steve8383

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

Code:
RewriteEngine On

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

That will take care of threads.

Post anchors can't be redirected. The member URLs are already the same. Albums can't be redirected because they don't have ids (may be possible with custom PHP script and a slug table if it exists). The id in the photo URL isn't the same which means that redirect would require a PHP script to consult the import log.

Honestly threads are the most important thing. If you would like me to pursue albums and photos then I need server access to develop them.
 
Many thanks @Jake Bunce threads are working fine now, phew!

Not too worried about album links not redirecting.

The problem with the photos not redirecting is that since my forum is vacation orientated a lot of people illustrate their posts with photos in their trip reports etc. Now the photos don't show because they reference an old url and instead there are lots of empty img tags in their posts, no photos and my 404 error log gets swamped by the missing pics.

If this is relatively straightforward to fix I would be quite happy to provide server access, I wouldn't want it to tie up too much of your time though.
 
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Still having a few problems with 404's following my import from VB 3.8

Example tag on the old vb site:
domain.com/forum/tags/cancun.html

With XF the tag is now a directory:
domain.com/forum/tags/cancun/

Could you please advise me a rewrite rule where the tag can be any string?

I Tried
Code:
RewriteRule ^tags\.html$ /forum/tags/? [R=301,L]
with no success.

Also have members complaining about pics not showing in their old posts (re above post)
 
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