Page Not Found

On Saturday I ordered VBSEO and had it installed by my host... urljet.com. They are a vbulletin focused hosting site. They completed the install about 8:00 PM on Saturday. On Sunday about 12 noon I went in and changed the settings for the URL rewrite from option 005 to 002. That is all I did. I left everything else alone. I know it is a set it and forget it thing so I figured I was setting it and that is that. I will leave it on 002 from now to the end of eternity. I was never asked if I had a preference so I figured that it is normal for a person to go in and set it up to their own preference after the install. I didn't think half a day would make a difference. Today, I go on to Google to see how many pages are indexed so I can check next week and see what the page count is and compare the two. I noticed that many of the pages were indexed with the URL's pointing to the option 005 setting. So, I click on one of the search result links and it takes me to a blank page (at my domain) that says only "Page Not Found". Should I not worry about this? Should I put something in the .htaccess that redirects back to the home page? Some feedback would be appreciated.

Hi Steven, welcome to vBSEO community

You may want to add these rules to your .htaccess file (right below RewriteEngine On line):

# For threads
RewriteRule ^t([0-9]+)/$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=showthread.php&t=$1 [L]

# For threads
RewriteRule ^f([0-9]+)/$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=forumdisplay.php&f=$1 [L]

Those rules will 301 redirect to your new format the URLs that are already indexed.

Under General Settings>vBSEO Options>"File Not Found" requests handling? I turned on the "redirect to homepage" option and that is working. Would you still recommend adding the rules to the .htaccess file?

Yes, you should add the redirect as it will take the bots/users to the actual requested page instead of a generic 404 or the homepage. see also: Create a Custom vBulletin "404 Page Not Found" Page, and direct vBSEO to use it. - vBulletin SEO Forums

Did it... Worked like a charm.

Thanks.

BTW the support you give is outstanding.

Okay. It worked when you clicked on the link from Google. BUT... I found when I'm on the forum and I click on a link (main forum link) it gave me an error that said something like "Firefox has detected that the page is redirecting in a way that will not complete". All other links seem to work fine. I also tried it in IE and it won't work either. I removed the two lines from my .htaccess file and the links now work.

Make sure your htacess and vb settings match for www settings.

[How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects - vBulletin SEO Forums

I looked and looked but didn't see where the vbseo settings were to do this. The link you gave doesn't have that info. My .htaccess is setup for www.

the vb options/settings -> site url /contact details menu is where you need to look.

also check the 'homepage settings' in vbseocp. these should match this Forumhome script name in vboptions.