Changing Domains: Directing Old Site to the New Site with htaccess

Hi,

My board is runing at /forum/.

With the new v4 I was thinking moving to root /.

Do you suggest this move?

What is the url structure you are planing for content.php?

Will I see my rankings penalized even with a 301 from /forum/ to /?

Why I think I should move:

- I only have a forum in this domain
- With the upcoming suite, /blog/ will look better than /forum/blog/
- If it does what I want, I'll replace vBa with the new CMS that is actually in the domain root.

What steps should I do and what should be placed in .htaccess?

Thanks

Hello,

If you are well indexed, I would not move to root, but that is your decision.

As for the structure for the URLs on the cms, I am sure they will be similar to the rewrites of the rest of the board.

If you want to move to root, please see here: Changing Domains: Directing Old Site to the New Site with htaccess

Yes, I'm well index and that's my main concern.

What if I move everything to root and prepend forum and threads vbseo rules with 'forum':

site.com <- rewrite to content.php
site.com/forum/ <- rewrite to index.php
site.com/forum/f1/ <- prepend all vbseo forum rewrite rules with 'forum'
site.com/forum/f1/thread-123/ <- prepend all vbseo thread rewrite rules with 'forum'
site.com/blog/ <- rewrite to blog.php

This way I don't change forum and threads path.

Will this work?

If you are wanting to do it like that, then at least you will not loose the indexed urls of your forum pages.

What you would need to do is manually edit the forum URLs and the thread URLs and manually add /forum/ in there.

Michael,

I can leave as it is (/forum/), and rewrite /forum/content.php to / and /forum/blog.php to /blogs/
Is this possible and simple?

I've tested the above setup and works like a charm.

My forum is installed in a subfolder, the root directory contains a wordpress blog. Now I need to redirect all forum pages to a new domain where the forum is installed in the root directory.

If I use the code above

Code:

 Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

it seems that my pages are being redirected to http://www.domain.com/forum because $1 from old forum contains the name of the subfolder. Any idea how I can avoid this?

Why not make a forum directory on newdomain.com and add the same .htaccess into it as well. That will point old->new/forum->new.

Wow, thanks for the quick answer. I will try this although I'd like to have the forum in the root of the new domain to keep URLs shorter.

I know, that way will. On new you should have it all in the root, then just make a blank forum folder, and include the same redirecting .htaccess file.

Thanks, this seems to work fine.

Great, glad it did

Originally Posted by nfn

Yes, I'm well index and that's my main concern.

What if I move everything to root and prepend forum and threads vbseo rules with 'forum':

site.com <- rewrite to content.php
site.com/forum/ <- rewrite to index.php
site.com/forum/f1/ <- prepend all vbseo forum rewrite rules with 'forum'
site.com/forum/f1/thread-123/ <- prepend all vbseo thread rewrite rules with 'forum'
site.com/blog/ <- rewrite to blog.php

This way I don't change forum and threads path.

Will this work?

Hello,

The setup highlighted above stop working with vB4 + vBseo 3.5 (test board)!
I've installed a fresh copy of RC4 and vBseo 3.5 and doesn't work ... with 3.8.4 + vBseo 3.3 worked ... Why?

Thanks

I want to replace my current domain www.ecoforumz.com with www.ebikeforum.com I tried the above code and the different variations without any luck. I want all my old links to continue to work. Below is my .htaccess can somebody update it with the correct code.

FYI - I have both domains registered with godaddy and have ebikeforum.com forwarded to www.ecoforumz.com could that be the problem and if so what is the correct way to handle this?

# Comment the following line (add '#' at the beginning)
# to disable mod_rewrite functions.
# Please note: you still need to disable the hack in
# the vBSEO control panel to stop url rewrites.
RewriteEngine On
# Some servers require the Rewritebase directive to be
# enabled (remove '#' at the beginning to activate)
# Please note: when enabled, you must include the path
# to your root vB folder (i.e. RewriteBase /forums/)
#RewriteBase /
#RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomain\.com
#RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/forums/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap_).*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !vbseourl=
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(admincp/|modcp/|chat|cron)
RewriteRule ^(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !\.(jpg|gif)$
RewriteRule ^(archive/.*)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^(admincp|modcp|clientscript|cpstyles|images)/
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1 [L,QSA]

That htaccess is from old versions of vbseo (2.5 era)

The easiest thing to do is to park the old domain on the new domain in your host/ISP control panel and then make sure you are using the non-www to www (or vice versa) redirection as outlined here:
[How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects - vBulletin SEO Forums

This will catch anything that is not www.yourdomain.com and 301 it TO www.yourdomain.com, including the parked domain.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

That htaccess is from old versions of vbseo (2.5 era)

The easiest thing to do is to park the old domain on the new domain in your host/ISP control panel and then make sure you are using the non-www to www (or vice versa) redirection as outlined here:
[How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects - vBulletin SEO Forums

This will catch anything that is not www.yourdomain.com and 301 it TO www.yourdomain.com, including the parked domain.

I replaced the old .htaccess with the one from vbseo 3.5.

next steps is to remove the forwarding I have, park my old domain on my new one, setup the .htaccess 301 redirects.

Will parking the old domain on the new one create any service interuption?
Do I need to change anything in vbulletin to also point to the new domain?