Custom Redirect from static file => GARS forum

[Tigratrus]

Mod Note: I think I posted this in the wrong forum first (vBulletin SEO Discussion/General Discussion) so if any helpful mod would like to delete that one or this one (depending on which is the most appropriate location) I'd appreciate it, thanks!

I've got a decently ranked (bunch of PR 3,4 and a few 5s) site that we've been moving entirely into a vBulletin forum with GARS customized forums holding much of the formerly static HTML content.

In any case, we've mostly completed several parts of the move and I'm looking to start redirecting folks coming in off old google links to the appropriate forum. If I understand correctly, you can use a custom 301 redirect to handle that without losing the PR of the old page?

Can someone give me an example of what the correct syntax in the vBSEO Custom 301 Redirects block in the vBSEO ACP would look like The reg expressions used in the included example makes it a bit vague?

For example:

If I've got a page http://www.mysite.com/info.htm
And I wanted to redirect it to http://www.mysite.com/forums/info/
what would the redirect look like?

Something like:
'info.htm' => 'forums/info/' ?

And would this accomplish what I'm trying to do, or am I totally misunderstanding how it works?

Thanks in advance for any assistance/clarification!

James and Susan

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

Hello,

the following Custom Redirect should work for you:

'info\.htm' => 'info/'

[Tigratrus]

Thank Oleg! Unfortunately that didn't work? If I understand correctly, once the 301 redirect is in there bringing up the page should automatically redirect you to the http://www.mysite.com/forums/info/ forum, but it doesn't? Is it a problem that the static page is at the web root?

Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding (more than just possible ;-)) the way it works... Does it only redirect Search bots? If so how do you test it?

I really appreciate the help in noodling this out, this is the last major part of our overall site restructuring, it's been a long road .

James and Susan

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

Hello,

"Custom Redirects" are applied to the links inside forums folder only. In case if info.htm page is located above, you should create .htaccess file for that:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^info\.htm http://www.domain.com/forums/info/ [L,R=301]

[Tigratrus]

Oleg, you rock!

I've always maintained that one effective example is worth well over 1000 words of explanation. That totally solved my syntax problem. I've been able to use that formatting to do all the variations I need, now it's just a matter of grinding through all the entries for the pages that have significant PR.

Thanks!

James and Susan

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

Great, you are welcome!