old board is still alive

[symptome]

2 years ago I imported my cutecast-board into a vbulletin-board.
But the old cutecast-board is still alive. I see guests surfing on it. And I see Google linking to it.
Could this be a problem for me? Is that duplicate content and as that bad for my pagerank?
Should I delete the old board?
Should I delete it in one step? Or could that be a problem for my pagerank too because Google looses a lot of pages from my site and will change my pagerank?

Thanks a lot!

Marcel

[rocket468]

You should redirect you old forum to your new one and then delete your old forum. Or change the url and put an exclude for it in your robot.txt

[Joe Ward]

You might want to do a bit of a closer analysis. Find out if any of the pages are getting alot of hits and for what. Then 301 redirect them to the most relevant pages on your new site.

However you decide to proceed, you should definitely get a 301 in place and remove the old forum.

[symptome]

Thanks a lot.
Sorry, I have to ask:
How/where do I put the 301?
Old forum is Das Ende der Symptombekämpfung (altes Forum) - powered by CuteCast
New forum is Das Ende der Symptombekämpfung - Das Gesundheitsforum

[symptome]

In fact, I don't even know how to find out, which pages get the most hits.

Take this thread:
Old board: Das Ende der Symptombekämpfung (altes Forum) | Thema - Multiple Sklerose=
New board: Multiple Sklerose - Das Ende der Symptombekämpfung

1. question:
How Do I make a 301? As I read, I have to put it into .htaccess ...
But which text/format?

2. question:
Is it okay, if I first link some threads ... and then link the rest, the whole board?
And how:
Old board: Das Ende der Symptombekämpfung (altes Forum) - powered by CuteCast
New board: Das Ende der Symptombekämpfung - Das Gesundheitsforum

Thanks a lot!
Marcel

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

Hello,

in order to redirect ALL old board URLs to new forums homepage you should create .htaccess in domain root:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^cgi-bin/cutecast/cutecast.pl http://www.symptome.ch/vbboard/? [L,R=301]

to redirect some of the thread and keep ALL others redirected to new homepage, you should add this right after "RewriteEngine on" line:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} thread=81
RewriteRule ^cgi-bin/cutecast/cutecast.pl http://www.symptome.ch/vbboard/auswirkungen/476-multiple-sklerose.html? [L,R=301]

similar for other threads.

[symptome]

Thanks a lot.
I still have a problem.

My root looks like this:

- cgi-bin (old board)
- http
- http/vbboard (new board)

So, cgi-bin and http are on the same level.
I placed the htaccess in "http". But like that, the command above is false. True?

How is the correct command for redirecting the whole board?

Marcel

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

Hello,

please try to create .htaccess in /cgi-bin/ folder:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^cutecast/.* http://www.symptome.ch/vbboard/? [L,R=301]

[symptome]

Perfect. Works!
How long do I have to wait to delete the old board?

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

You can remove the old board now, since ANY request is redirected to a new forum anyway (you should keep .htaccess though).

[symptome]

I've tried to redirect the threads now.
This one is correct.

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} thread=1458
RewriteRule ^cutecast/cutecast.pl http_//www.symptome.ch/vbboard/showthread.php?t=1? [L,R=301]
(without "_" in "http")

1.
But I had to redirect 1500 threads in .htaccess. Is this a problem? A problem for the board, for accessing (time). A problem for searchengines?

2.
I've got an excel-file with 2 columns: the old and the new thread-id. How do I get the correct .htaccess-file with 1500 records out of that?

Thanks!!!
Marcel

[Oleg Ignatiuk]

This .htaccess is processed only when your old forums URL is accessed, so it should not be a problem for performance. 1500 URLs is quite a large amount though and you might consider creating a small script instead - that should be probably easier to implement comparing to 1500 rewrite rules.

[symptome]

Exactly the next day that I set the redirection, I lost a daily 1'000 Visitors approx. from about 4'500.
Do I have to expect that?
Will Google bring me more visitors in the near future?

I hope, these old files and redirections don't look like shadowpages for google ...

Thanks!
Marcel