XenForo Redirects for vBulletin 1.1.9

[Shuya]

My understanding was that if someone hits a vB link to an old thread it should be redirected to the same thread under the XenForo system?

That's correct.

Did you select the vBulletin import log table in the Options?

 

[jim1985]

That's correct.

Did you select the vBulletin import log table in the Options?

Yep, that's all done.

It seems as though the issue here is that the old vB style URLs are simply not getting pushed over to XenForo to be dealt with by the redirects addon in the first place.

I am using the standard .htaccess file supplied with the addon and have placed this in the root of the /forums folder where vB used to reside. I have also replaced the vB index.php file with the one also supplied with this addon. I have edited the index.php with the correct path to the XenForo installation

 

[jim1985]

I managed to fix this issue by upgrading the PHP version that was serving our old vB content. Now visiting www.domain.com/forums correctly redirects to www.domain.com/community


However, we have now encountered another issue in that if we visit a link to a specific forum or thread under the old vB system it does not redirect to the relevant link under the new XF system, it just loads the old vB content.
How do we fix this?

Sorted it out, just replying here to let you guys know.

Re-read back through this thread and This Post gave me the answer I needed.

Removed showthread.php and forumdisplay.php from the old /forums folder and now everything redirects to the correct area of the XenForo installation

 

[Mr Lucky]

Removed showthread.php and forumdisplay.php from the old /forums folder

You might as well remove the entire vbulletin installation from the old folder

 

[jim1985]

You might as well remove the entire vbulletin installation from the old folder

We have a customised payment_gateway.php file still residing in there that handles recurring payment IPN from paypal that were originally set up under the vB system and passes that data on to the XenForo system

 

[Dragonfruit]

I understand this, but when I visit an old vBulletin link, it does not redirect it to the XenForo format, it just simply opens the link, lets say a specific thread, in the old vB installation.

My understanding was that if someone hits a vB link to an old thread it should be redirected to the same thread under the XenForo system?

Yes, but under the same URL.

Example, if your vBulletin links were like this for threads, BEFORE you changed to Xenforo:
domain.com/showthread.php?t=1

And now Xenforo links are: domain.com/threads/1

Opening domain.com/showthread.php?t=1, should route to domain.com/threads/1

To ensure this works, go to your Admin > Addons > XenForo Redirects for vBulletin 1.1.9

Set "vBulletin import log table" to the vbulletin import log table.

Your initial post made it sound like your expectation was your old vbulletin installation is on domain.com/forum, and your XF installation is on domain.com/community, and when you open links on domain.com/forum, it won't redirect to domain.com/community, in that case no, it won't work.

It only redirects for everything within the same directory. So if your old forum was domain.com/forum, you should've kept it all the same as domain.com/forum

The upgrade and redirect, you're not meant to keep the old vBulletin running side by side with XF.

 

[jim1985]

Yes, but under the same URL.

Example, if your vBulletin links were like this for threads, BEFORE you changed to Xenforo:
domain.com/showthread.php?t=1

And now Xenforo links are: domain.com/threads/1

Opening domain.com/showthread.php?t=1, should route to domain.com/threads/1

To ensure this works, go to your Admin > Addons > XenForo Redirects for vBulletin 1.1.9

Set "vBulletin import log table" to the vbulletin import log table.

Your initial post made it sound like your expectation was your old vbulletin installation is on domain.com/forum, and your XF installation is on domain.com/community, and when you open links on domain.com/forum, it won't redirect to domain.com/community, in that case no, it won't work.

It only redirects for everything within the same directory. So if your old forum was domain.com/forum, you should've kept it all the same as domain.com/forum

The upgrade and redirect, you're not meant to keep the old vBulletin running side by side with XF.

Well I don’t know what to tell you, but it’s all working now as I was originally expecting it to.

Old links referencing the /forums folder are now happily redirected to the correct areas of the XenForo installation in the /community folder

 

[Dragonfruit]

Well I don’t know what to tell you, but it’s all working now as I was originally expecting it to.

Old links referencing the /forums folder are now happily redirected to the correct areas of the XenForo installation in the /community forum

This would work if you applied htaccess rewrites that would push /forum to /community, that's how I see this working. But the add-on itself cannot do this on its own, it's not meant to know right out of the box how to accept links from a different URL.

In fact I kept our vBulletin board too, so we can still access it and reference data as needed, but it doesn't route the way you're describing, because we haven't done anything on the htaccess side, or any other routing beyond this addon.

 

[jim1985]

This would work if you applied htaccess rewrites that would push /forum to /community, that's how I see this working. But the add-on itself cannot do this on its own, it's not meant to know right out of the box how to accept links from a different URL.

In fact I kept our vBulletin board too, so we can still access it and reference data as needed, but it doesn't route the way you're describing, because we haven't done anything on the htaccess side, or any other routing beyond this addon.

Yep, the addon comes with the necessary .htaccess rules

 

[gerryvz]

htaccess is the key here. @Dragonfruit is 100% bang on. I had to do similar when I implemented the redirects. I finally shut down the vBulletin forum after about 6 months - only kept it running in case something was needed or for reference. Once the redirects started working, it was totally seamless and remains so 4 years later.

 

[jim1985]

htaccess is the key here. @Dragonfruit is 100% bang on. I had to do similar when I implemented the redirects. I finally shut down the vBulletin forum after about 6 months - only kept it running in case something was needed or for reference. Once the redirects started working, it was totally seamless and remains so 4 years later.

Yes I know the htaccess was / is required, I had it implemented but it wasn’t working for me.

In the end, removing forumdisplay.php & shrowthread.php from the old vB /forums folder was what was key to it working.
Obviously with them still being present in the folder it was upsetting the rewrite rules.
As soon as I removed those 2 files everything worked as expected

 

[AntonyF]

Could someone help please, I've been trying to get this to work and ploughing through 22 pages looking for the solution but i've failed.

Installed the addon. Told it the import database. Going to an old URL it gives a 404.

I am appending the old URL to the new URL, but the domain is different. Would that cause it to break?

I'm also on NGINX. I have seen various bits of talk about this in this thread but am not sure what I need to do (if anything) to adapt for NGINX.

Thanks
Antony

 

[MentaL]

Could someone help please, I've been trying to get this to work and ploughing through 22 pages looking for the solution but i've failed.

Installed the addon. Told it the import database. Going to an old URL it gives a 404.

I am appending the old URL to the new URL, but the domain is different. Would that cause it to break?

I'm also on NGINX. I have seen various bits of talk about this in this thread but am not sure what I need to do (if anything) to adapt for NGINX.

Thanks
Antony

If your table import_log_vbulletin being populated?

 

[AntonyF]

If your table import_log_vbulletin being populated?

It has data in it it, yes.

 

[chillibear]

Resolved AntonyF's issue. It was down to Nginx. So the main location block had lower precedence to the block that deals with FastCGI PHP scripts. So the VB URLs being PHP scripts were hitting that block and being looked for directly, they didn't exist and hence a 404. The assumption had been they'd hit the main location block and be passed to index.php and hence the redirects add-on's router. Resolved by extending the try_files in the FastCGI PHP block to pass missing files to the index.php endpoint, ie.

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$uri&$args;

 

[ChrisD.]

This doesn't appear to be working for me. The old VB site and XF are in /forums so use the same URL.

Is it just a case of installing the add-on, selecting the correct table and it should work?

Is there anything specific I need to do with .htaccess as an example?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[ChrisD.]

That's built when your vBulletin's converted to XF, you lost the table? You have no backups? There's nothing anyone can really do to help you. If you still have a copy of your vBulletin, you can try converting it again to a new XF, do it the exact same way, if you retained thread IDs and etc before, do the same again.

Then export a copy of it from the new XF's DB, and import it to your live site's DB.

Otherwise, I don't see a solution to this, at all.

Hi, I think this is the same situation I am in.

Timeline of events:

2021 forum goes down
2021 sometime later someone (not me) installs XF and imports the old site into XF
2021-2023 some users report links not working
2023 I'm moving the forum/site to a new host, and taking ownership
2023 I find out the links are all from the 'old' VB install
I then installed this mod, but discovered that import_log_vbulletin4_1 is missing
I used the original backup files from 2021 to import onto a dev/test box I have
I exported import_log_vbulletin4_1.sql from the db and imported into that into another dev/test box db

Links however are still not redirecting properly. Any assistance greatly appreciated.

Does this add-on log errors anywhere?

EDIT

Managed to get the extension installed onto the live site, guessed at the log table (it had a random name) and redirects are working correctly.

Not sure why they wouldn't work on a test site with dns rewrites but there we go!

 

[zaja]

Is it possible to convert old vb links inside posts, messages and signatures to regular xenforo links so that it is no longer necessary to use the "XenForo Redirects for vBulletin" plugin and import_log table?

 

[MySiteGuy]

Possible, yes.
But it's going to be a lot of work and testing with regular expressions to get every possible link format in posts, with the find and replace add-on. And then you'll still need to use MySQL queries to handle profile posts, conversation messages, and signatures.

So much work for no real benefit for SEO or clicking to the proper destination.

 

[zaja]

So much work for no real benefit for SEO or clicking to the proper destination.

Thanks, it is a benefit because you are no longer dependent on the Redirects plugin. Or, for example, if you want to migrate from Xenforo to some other forum software like Discourse, the old dead links from vbulletin will still be there.
So it would be quite logical to transfer those links to xenforo links, instead of dragging them in the content of the forum.