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Question on moving location of message board.

Discussion in 'Site & Server Administration' started by mike_d, Jun 19, 2009.

  1. #1
    I have a message board that I have to move. It's in the root directory of the site at the moment, but will have to be moved to a sub-directory to make way for new content in the root directory. So the set-up will be:

    www. examplesite .co.uk - New content
    www. examplesite .co.uk/forum - New home of forum.

    My question is: are there any precautions I should take when moving the forum? Is it just a case of cutting and pasting into the new folder, or will I have to attempt some form of redirect to take account of possible multiple content penalties etc? It has nearly 1800 threads, so obviously I can't manually set up redirects: is there a known way of handling this?

    Any help on this would be appreciated, as it's got me stumped.

    Mike.
     
    mike_d, Jun 19, 2009 IP
  2. kailash

    kailash Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Which message board software are you using (i.e. vBulletin, SMF, phpbb etc.)?

    Also, once you move your board to new location you will need to set 301 redirection or else you will lose your Google Rank as well as traffic which you are receiving from Google and other search engines.
     
    kailash, Jun 19, 2009 IP
    mike_d likes this.
  3. raviseo

    raviseo Peon

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    #3
    yes a redirect should be permanent 301
     
    raviseo, Jun 19, 2009 IP
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  4. mike_d

    mike_d Peon

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    #4
    Thanks for the replies, guys. :)

    I'm using SMF. You both advise using a 301 redirect, but (unless I'm mistaken) I understood that 301s are used when there's nothing replacing the content and all you want to do is point to a new location. New content, however, is going in place of the moved content: I don't want to redirect people from this content, I want people to view it. Am I mistaken in my guess that a 301 wouldn't be appropriate here, or is some other method viable?

    Cheers,
    Mike.
     
    mike_d, Jun 20, 2009 IP
  5. kailash

    kailash Well-Known Member

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    #5
    As you have installed your forum in root (http://yourwebsite.com), Google and other search engines should have your threads and posts are listed as http://yourwebsite.com/sometopic etc. Now, you are moving your board from root folder of your domain to forum folder (http://yourwebsite.com/forum), the old URL (http://yourwebsite.com/sometopic) will give you 404 error page. So you will lose all your indexed threads and posts from search engine. However, to overcome this you can use 301 redirection from old URLs to new URLs. You can do it via .htaccess.

    And to change your board URL, just upload all the files in forum folder and then login to your admin panel and go to "Server Settings". From here change the paths for "Forum URL", "SMF Directory" and Sources Directory.

    Kailash
     
    kailash, Jun 20, 2009 IP