Upgrading to VB5 from VB3.8.8 with VBSEO/DBSEO for Popular Forum

[petforums]

Hi,

I run a popular forum with 5 million posts and nearly 400k threads. We are currently on vbulletin 3.8.8 with dbseo rewritten urls (was using vbseo until they closed). I would love to upgrade our forum straight to the latest version of vbulletin 5, but just worried that i would lose my rankings unless there is an easy way to 301 redirect all my existing forum/thread/post urls to the vbulletin 5 url structure.

Also I'm abit wary of how long it would take or how difficult it would be to upgrade straight from version 3.8.8 to the latest vb5. Would the upgrade be very slow?

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Eruss]

Can vb5 handle such a big forum?

[BirdOPrey5]

There is nothing built into VB5 that would allow you to redirect you DBSEO URLs to the new VB5 ones. Only default VB3 URLs would get redirected. I would consider upgrading to VB 4.2.2 instead, I believe DBSEO will let you keep the same URLs between those two versions

[petforums]

There is nothing built into VB5 that would allow you to redirect you DBSEO URLs to the new VB5 ones. Only default VB3 URLs would get redirected. I would consider upgrading to VB 4.2.2 instead, I believe DBSEO will let you keep the same URLs between those two versions

Thanks for your information. Maybe you should talk with the owners and developers of vbulletin. If you added the option on VB5 to keep the same url structures as where available in vbseo, i'm sure you would get hundreds of existing vbulletin3 and 4 owners with vbseo, purchasing and upgrading to vbulletin5.

Thanks

[Mark.B]

Thanks for your information. Maybe you should talk with the owners and developers of vbulletin. If you added the option on VB5 to keep the same url structures as where available in vbseo, i'm sure you would get hundreds of existing vbulletin3 and 4 owners with vbseo, purchasing and upgrading to vbulletin5.

Thanks

This has been considered many times. It isn't going to happen I'm afraid. We cannot develop the product around third party code that we didn't write, particularly not where the company that did write the code no longer exists.

In the grand scheme of customers using vBulletin, only a TINY fraction use SEO add on scripts.

[BirdOPrey5]

Thanks for your information. Maybe you should talk with the owners and developers of vbulletin. If you added the option on VB5 to keep the same url structures as where available in vbseo, i'm sure you would get hundreds of existing vbulletin3 and 4 owners with vbseo, purchasing and upgrading to vbulletin5.

Thanks

As Mark has mentioned it has been considered but not likely to come in the form of an official VB option. However there is always the possibility Dragon Byte or some other developer will release an add-on for VB5 to keep earlier VBSEO URL Structure at some point.

[Wayne Luke]

Can vb5 handle such a big forum?

This site is easily 3 times as large as the one stated in the opening post: http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/

[motd2]

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/Bass/acapella-39/509394-/page2

[is_it_me]

This site is easily 3 times as large as the one stated in the opening post: http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/

Perhaps not the best example, considering the problems they are having since 'upgrading' to vB5, resulting in loads of complaints from users and a big drop in traffic.

[rudedog1968]

Quote from their owner

We have our own coders who have been initiating "fixes" to the broken and poorly written vB code. vB has even reached out to us to find out how our site works so well.

[Mark.B]

Off topic posts removed. People should take their personal agendas elsewhere.

[Paul M]

Also I'm abit wary of how long it would take or how difficult it would be to upgrade straight from version 3.8.8 to the latest vb5. Would the upgrade be very slow?

For what reason do you want to upgrade ?
Unless you have a very compelling reason, I would suggest you stay as you are.

The upgrade would be very slow for such a large database, and vB5 will not perform as well as vB3.
I dont know what other customisations you have, but be aware you will lose them all, and any custom style as well

[donald1234]

For what reason do you want to upgrade ?
Unless you have a very compelling reason, I would suggest you stay as you are.

The upgrade would be very slow for such a large database,[bold] and vB5 will not perform as well as vB3.[/bold]
I dont know what other customisations you have, but be aware you will lose them all, and any custom style as well

Wow, I admire your honesty.

[is_it_me]

Ditto ^^^

[Mark.B]

Most of what Paul posted is standard advice and has been for many years.

Why do you want to upgrade?

For many people, the answer is actually, "because I want the newest, shiniest version". But that's a terrible reason to upgrade.

In the past month, via support tickets, I have:

Advised a customer to upgrade to 3.8.8
Advised a customer to upgrade to 4.2.2
Advised a customer to upgrade to 5.1.2

I've also assisted them in doing so.
The end result has been satisfactory and the customers are very happy with the end result.

That's because (a) the upgrades were done for the right reasons and (b) the upgrades were properly planned and executed.

[donald1234]

Actually it was this part I was referring to.

and vB5 will not perform as well as vB3.