Redirecting PAL to /forums

[Jeremy]

Hopefully tonight we are going to be rolling out the beta of the new PAL set-up. Everything will be driven on the VB platform. I am actually very excited about this because it has always been a struggle getting traffic to the main site. Having one website on 2 platforms is not optimal.

Anyhow, here is the dilemma. I have hundreds of blog posts and several University articles that I'd like to import to VB pages at some point, not initially.

Unfortunately, I imagine the URL structure will be different. Will I need to 301 every article or blog post individually? Likewise couldn't I just un-index all the pages on the root domain of the site, and then they'd be re-indexed once imported here in the /forums.

Any thoughts from the SEO gurus here. Thanks in advance.


Signed,

Captain Question

[CK]

I would 301 them to the new urls individually. You want to keep the backlinks you have built, age pr so thats what I would do. Yeah its pain in the ass but personally I think its the best option

[Spry]

agreed, except i would outsource Kaus to handle this 301 re-direction if at all humanly possible .

[Gydian]

Definitely 301 them. Don't want to lose the work you put into linking them.

[Jeremy]

agreed, except i would outsource Kaus to handle this 301 re-direction if at all humanly possible .

Yes, this type of stuff is not my specialty.... I agree. Thanks Kaus, I was just looking for the lazy and easiest way to do it.

If I do outsource, since the U.S. dollar is so weak, I will be paying in Turkish Lira via my forex account.

[Nat Arem]

I would also 301, but there's usually a better way to do it than line by line in an htaccess file.

[Trikkur]

I would also 301, but there's usually a better way to do it than line by line in an htaccess file.

Please explain!

I always do my 301s in htaccess. Should I be using something different, or is there a way to add multiple stuff easily.

[Nat Arem]

Please explain!

I always do my 301s in htaccess. Should I be using something different, or is there a way to add multiple stuff easily.

Well, as an example, I migrated a site today to a new system. There is a WordPress install on the system. And the old news backend was a custom system. So I made a table (explained below) and used this code in the WordPress index.php:

<?php
/**
 * Front to the WordPress application. This file doesn't do anything, but loads
 * wp-blog-header.php which does and tells WordPress to load the theme.
 *
 * @package WordPress
 */

//Code to redirect old news to new news pages

  include("../database-config.php"); //I changed this for PAL :)
  
  $requesturi = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
  
  if(preg_match("/\/news\/(.+).shtml/",$requesturi,$matches)) {
    $slug = $matches[1];
    $slug = addslashes($slug);
    $query = "SELECT `newsid`
              FROM `news301redirects`
              WHERE `slug` LIKE CONVERT( _utf8 '$slug'
              USING latin1 )
              COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci
              LIMIT 0 , 1 ";
    $result = mysql_query($query);
    
    $rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
    if($rows == 0) { //no slug found
      header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently', true, 301); 
      header("Location: /news/");
      exit();
    }
    
    $row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
    $articleid = $row[0];
    
    $query = "SELECT `post_name`
              FROM `wp_posts`
              WHERE `ID` = $articleid
              LIMIT 0 , 1 ";
    $result = mysql_query($query);
    
    $rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
    if($rows == 0) { //no id found
      header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently', true, 301); 
      header("Location: /news/");
      exit();
    }
    
    $row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
    
    $newarticleslug = $row[0];
    
    $newurl = "/news/$newarticleslug-$articleid/";
    header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently', true, 301); 
    header("Location: $newurl");
    exit();
  }

/**
 * Tells WordPress to load the WordPress theme and output it.
 *
 * @var bool
 */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);

/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
?>

My old news structure was /news/[slug].shtml. So I took the old news table, deleted every column except id and slug/url (which used to be written by hand). Then I imported the 700some old posts into WordPress using the same ids. Then I use the two queries above (with some error/bug fixes to make sure everything works okay) to determine the redirected URL. Then I use two php header lines to send the user and search engine to the right place.

No htaccess needed. Let me know if you have questions, but this was a 20 minute project max, which is much better than putting 750 lines in my htaccess imo.

[Trikkur]

I followed none of that. I wish I could code lol. Thanks though, maybe when the time comes for me to do something that massive, I will actually study that and figure out how to implement it.

[Jeremy]

Nat, you are wealth of knowledge dude. Thanks homeboy.