Need Help: Updated to VB4.0.8 from 3.8 How to save the Indexed pages.

I just recently updated my VB to 4.0.8 from 3.8


I have over 25,000 indexed pages in google at the moment. How do I make sure that those old pages are redirected to the new URL format in VB4?

my forums used to be located at "forums.prisonofficer.org" and now with the VB changes they will be in www.prisonofficer.org/forums/


I don't want to lose 3 years of work because of an upgrade. Can anyone assist?

Hi Cory,

Are you saying that when you upgraded, you decided to make your vBulletin files reside in a subdirectory (/forums/) when previously they were in root?

No Ace...

Previously in 3.8... My setup was this...
vbAdvancedCMS = /public_html (www.prisonofficers.org)
VBROOT /public_html/forums (forums.prisonofficer.org)

All of my forum urls currently point to http://forums.prisonofficer.org/ ie. http://forums.prisonofficer.org/offi...y-atwater.html

With the changes to VB4 and not being able to use subdomains.. that same URL is now this.. Correctional officer killed at USP-Atwater

Hello Cory,

To redirect all of the incoming traffic from the old subdomain to the new domain, please try to add to the folder where your forum was stored an .htaccess file with the following content:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.prisonofficer.org/$1 [L,R=301]

Awesome.. that worked... Will Google and the other SE's detect that an update the pages on their end?

Yep, that's the way the 301 redirect works . It sends an http header indicating to the SE's that the target URL has been moved to another place avoiding thus the 404 penalized error.