[Forum] URL Rewrite and/or Redirect assistance needed

[sportsfroma2]

Hi,

question for those that are versed in .htaccess files and redirection-

I just moved my vB suite install from a folder (www.mysite.com/forums) to the root.

Also, I'm using the Mod Rewrite Friendly URL option, with the vbulletin-supplied .htaccess file.

1) What's the best way to ensure external links will be able to reach the "new" location? Like for example, http://www.mysite.com/forums/threads...blah-blah-blah would automatically go to http://www.mysite.com/threads/1111-t...blah-blah-blah (same URL, just without the /forums)
I tried a could of things that I found from google or whatever and just ended up getting 500 errors so figured I'd consult the experts here become continuing to experiment

2) This request isn't as important as #1, but I also recently finally totally migrated my content from an old CMS system to vBulletin's CMS, and wanted to know if there's a simple way to redirect my article links..
EX: one article was located at: http://mysite.com/index.php?option=c...-bio&Itemid=63, and the vbulletin CMS entry is at: http://www.mydomain.com/content/336-blah-blah-blah . I figured there isn't a rule that'll automatically change these URL's but I should at least be able to set up a permanant redirect for them in the .htaccess file, but messed that up also.

My current .htaccess file looks like this, if it matters:

RewriteEngine on

<Files 403.shtml>
order allow,deny
allow from all
</Files>

deny from 12.345.678.

# If you are having problems or are using VirtualDocumentRoot, uncomment this line and set it to your vBulletin directory.
# RewriteBase /forum/

# If you are having problems with the rewrite from content/ to content.php, uncomment this line to turn MultiViews off.
# Options -MultiViews

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d

RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]

# Forum
RewriteRule ^threads/.* showthread.php [QSA]
RewriteRule ^forums/.* forumdisplay.php [QSA]
RewriteRule ^members/.* member.php [QSA]
RewriteRule ^blogs/.* blog.php [QSA]
RewriteRule ^entries/.* entry.php [QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d

RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]

# MVC
RewriteRule ^(?:(.*?)(?:/|$))(.*|$)$ $1.php?r=$2 [QSA]

(BTW, Yes, I replaced the deny IP address with a fake one, so don't be alarmed with that, lol)

Thanks a lot for looking at this!

[sportsfroma2]

I think I figured out some of my problem-

So when I had my site in the /forums folder, when I visited a forum, the URL was:

http://www.mysite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php=17

with mod rewrite enabled that became:

http://www.mysite.com/forums/forums/17-Mods-Only-Forum

Now with vbulletin in the root:

with the same v-bulletin supplied mod_rewrite rules,

the same link to the forum is:

http://www.mysite.com/forums/17-Mods-Only-Forum

So when I enable the mod_rewrite rule to strip the /forums out of all the old links (where there actually WAS a /forums directory), the "new" forum friendly link becomes http://www.mysite.com/17-Mods-Only-Forum (which obviously doesn't work).

So, the workaround that I can think of is to change the vbulletin rewrite rules to make the new friendly URLs do something different that forums- maybe boards? so the new links would have a friendly URL of http://www.mysite.com/boards/17-Mods-Only-Forum

Then, I can still continue to strip all the old /forums string out of all old links, right?

so if I just want to change the new friendly forum URL's to /boards, would I just change:

RewriteRule ^forums/.* forumdisplay.php [QSA]

to

RewriteRule ^boards/.* forumdisplay.php [QSA]

?

[sportsfroma2]

so if I just want to change the new friendly forum URL's to /boards, would I just change:

RewriteRule ^forums/.* forumdisplay.php [QSA]

to

RewriteRule ^boards/.* forumdisplay.php [QSA]

?

so just to keep it updated, incase anyonehere is reading this, that did not work.. Didn't change the URL any, just made the forums inaccessible (error 500)

what gives?

[Final Kaoss]

Grab the htaccess here.

It supports friendly urls and covers the following Pagespeed Rules.

Leverage browser caching
Specify a cache validator
Enable gzip compression

Just copy the contents of that into your existing htaccess file (the one in your forum root if you have other htaccess files.)