Change URLs before the migration or before the migration?

Hello,

I currently have my forum at domain.com/forum and my pages are like forum/installation-issues/12499-dvb-c-channel-setup-failture.html

I will start using the VB suite to try increasing the traffic on my root domain and want to improve further my URL rewrite to something like:
/
/forum/ (forum index)
/dvb-c-channel-setup-failture-12499/ (thread name - removing the forum and category folder)

What is the best way to do that?
Should I do all the changes at the same time when I move to VB4? or should I do the change in steps?
Is there a way to use something similar to ( 404 / 301 Tool After Import Redirect on ImpEx imported forums ) to redirect page with the old naming convention to the new naming convention?

Any advice will be more than welcome.

Thanks
Ludo

Hello,

since thread IDs are not changed, you will not need 404/301 tool for redirects. If you current thread URLs are:
forum/installation-issues/12499-dvb-c-channel-setup-failture.html
and new one will be:
dvb-c-channel-setup-failture-12499/

You can use rewrite rule in .htaccess, like:

RewriteRule ^forum/.+/([0-9]+)-.+\.html vbseo.php?vbseourl=showthread.php&t=$1 [L]

and vBSEO will redirect it to the new formatted link.

Thanks Oleg.

I just have to hope that the threads/forums ids are not modified by vb4 when upgrading.