Thread ID's changed, links to your site no longer work?

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  • slinky
    Senior Member
    • Mar 2001
    • 3113
    • 1.1.x

    #46
    Originally posted by Zachery
    People are upset that the ids are changing, and that urls are changing. This can cause some loss of search engine rankings in the short term.
    And potentially in the long term including the overhead that comes with having to keep and use a very large lookup table for big boards (whether or not you're a monkey or on the moon.) I do appreciate you acknowledging the issue regarding SEO. There are no guarantees that changing your URLs won't affect you and it is all speculation as to what the overall net effect is from doing so.

    The only thing I guess we can say safely from this thread is that even though there are concerns, a decision was made that they are minor in comparison to the benefits gained by creating vB 5 in this fashion. It seems opinions differ but the option to have the current URLs stay the same will certainly not be an option for VB 5. I guess that's all we really need to know. Thank you both for making the likely direction clear.
    My law forum, lawyers and legal help site

    Comment

    • Andy
      Senior Member
      • Jan 2002
      • 5886
      • 4.1.x

      #47
      Originally posted by Zachery
      People are upset that the ids are changing, and that urls are changing. This can cause some loss of search engine rankings in the short term.
      No it's not a short term problem it's ever lasting problem. The huge lookup table is something one must maintain for the life of their forum. This is what we want to avoid.

      Comment

      • Zachery
        Former vBulletin Support
        • Jul 2002
        • 59097

        #48
        Originally posted by Andy
        No it's not a short term problem it's ever lasting problem. The huge lookup table is something one must maintain for the life of their forum. This is what we want to avoid.
        Its a short term problem, as time goes on, old urls won't be used/refrenced. Search engines will update their records. Problem self resolves.

        AFAIK, without going to look at an upgraded schema table, I believe its held in the same table as the node itself.

        Comment

        • Andy
          Senior Member
          • Jan 2002
          • 5886
          • 4.1.x

          #49
          Originally posted by Zachery
          Its a short term problem, as time goes on, old urls won't be used/refrenced. Search engines will update their records. Problem self resolves.
          I wonder how search engines (dealing with links on other sites that link to my forum) deal with one link that use the old URL and another link that uses the new URL and they both point to the same thread or post. Will the results in Google be listed twice?

          Originally posted by Zachery

          AFAIK, without going to look at an upgraded schema table, I believe its held in the same table as the node itself.
          Is there only one database table in vB5?

          Comment

          • slinky
            Senior Member
            • Mar 2001
            • 3113
            • 1.1.x

            #50
            Originally posted by Zachery
            Its a short term problem, as time goes on, old urls won't be used/refrenced. Search engines will update their records. Problem self resolves.
            AFAIK, without going to look at an upgraded schema table, I believe its held in the same table as the node itself.
            Search engines may update their records - what about the 50,000 backlinks from third party websites that you may have to the old URL and what value (or loss of value) that might mean with regard to a page ranking algorithm? Theoretically, every search engine should take this into account. But Andy's point (and I think anyone who is concerned about SEO) is that there are no guarantees whatsoever and if it ain't broke after 11 years, there should be no thought put forward to fixing it permanently.

            With regard to the upgraded schema table, it's still a huge lookup table that must be maintained and used. For a site with 10,000 pages that might not be such a big deal. But what about 500,000? 1 million? 5 million? These numbers are not far out of the normal spectrum.
            My law forum, lawyers and legal help site

            Comment

            • Lizard King
              Banned
              • Mar 2004
              • 1891
              • 3.6.x

              #51
              I didn't read the posts after page 2 , however for my poor clients who decide to upgrade to vB5 , i am already planning to code a solution. If the old id's are kept in place , it should be pretty easy to hack how the routing system functions and get old id's functional. Queries may need to be altered but if the old id is present in table , than it is pretty feasible to do this.

              thing vBulletin team misses : Many big boards were not switching to another platform because of their SE rankings. Now with the uber clever decision you took the only reason why big boards are still on vBulletin 3.

              FYI : We already contacted to IPB for migrating our 15+ mil post big board as a start to IPB.

              Comment

              • dethfire
                Senior Member
                • Mar 2003
                • 475
                • 3.8.x

                #52
                Originally posted by Lizard King

                FYI : We already contacted to IPB for migrating our 15+ mil post big board as a start to IPB.
                Won't that also change the URL to their system?
                http://www.physicsforums.com

                Comment

                • jdj
                  Senior Member
                  • Jan 2009
                  • 824
                  • 5.1.x

                  #53
                  Originally posted by dethfire
                  If redirects are not perfect, there is zero chance of established forums to upgrade. I'm not losing all my links in google and backlinks. This sounds really scary.
                  Presumably this also affects twitter links. Any time we tweet something with vB4 we provide a link back (because that's the whole point of doing it).

                  Comment

                  • Mondy
                    Senior Member
                    • Apr 2008
                    • 199
                    • 3.6.x

                    #54
                    Originally posted by Lizard King
                    FYI : We already contacted to IPB for migrating our 15+ mil post big board as a start to IPB.
                    That, Mert, stopped me in tracks completely. If you guys are willing and prepared to make that plunge with 15+ mil posts there really isn't anything stopping me or my clients.

                    I'll be seriously reconsidering my/our options in the next 24 hours... I refuse to pay the 200 bucks for the 'install' or 'upgrade' - or whatever they want to call vB5, especially if what IPB charges for what seems a full-working and complete solution isn't far beyond that price...
                    http://gblcg.com - The Business of Your Future - Strategy Redefined.

                    Comment

                    • Lizard King
                      Banned
                      • Mar 2004
                      • 1891
                      • 3.6.x

                      #55
                      Originally posted by dethfire
                      Won't that also change the URL to their system?
                      Yes it will however it is not feasible to stay on vBulletin 3.8 anymore as internet is evolving. We will have to face this change in any condition so we believe it is best to make the change now to another software company as they are releasing stable product and they interact with their customers. They also have a renewal system in place , which allow you not to pay them in front for every new version. We still have unused vBulletin 4 Suite + Mobile Suite licenses.

                      Comment

                      • dethfire
                        Senior Member
                        • Mar 2003
                        • 475
                        • 3.8.x

                        #56
                        Originally posted by Lizard King
                        Yes it will however it is not feasible to stay on vBulletin 3.8 anymore as internet is evolving.
                        I'm still giving vB a chance through Gold release. My 3.8 is running just fine and my members are happy. No rush for me to upgrade or move platforms. I could likely get another 2-3 years out of 3.8
                        http://www.physicsforums.com

                        Comment

                        • Lizard King
                          Banned
                          • Mar 2004
                          • 1891
                          • 3.6.x

                          #57
                          Originally posted by dethfire
                          I'm still giving vB a chance through Gold release. My 3.8 is running just fine and my members are happy. No rush for me to upgrade or move platforms. I could likely get another 2-3 years out of 3.8
                          Surely you can , we were thinking the same thing and we developed our own html5 style for vB3. But we put the development on hold when we heard about vBulletin 5 ( which was a terrible mistake i did ) . With vBulletin 5 initial demo and changed ID's , there is no hope for us to stay with vBulletin. That's why instead of spending additional cost for developing products for a dead project ( vb3 ) it is best for us to share those resources porting to a stable product which improves it's script each other day.

                          Comment

                          • Alfa1
                            Senior Member
                            • Dec 2005
                            • 4165
                            • 3.8.x

                            #58
                            Originally posted by Zachery
                            Its a short term problem, as time goes on, old urls won't be used/refrenced. Search engines will update their records. Problem self resolves.
                            Not really. The internet is bigger than search engines. There are a massive number of links to my site located on other sites. So old urls will be referenced until all of these other websites die. That will take decades. So search engines will keep referencing the old url structure, as other sites are also referencing the old url structure.

                            It might be an interesting thing to note that the one major difference between vbulletin and IPB is SEO. The matter that we are discussing in this thread is exactly the matter that has been keeping many big board webmasters from migrating to IPB. There is discussion about this on many admin forums. You might want to check that out.
                            Its exactly this discussion that prompted IPS to take action on SEO and rethink their system.

                            I'm just stating this to underline that this is a major issue that I think should not be taken lightly.

                            I also do not see why on earth its not possible to just keep old urls. Off course its possible. Just create a new showthread.php file. That's not rocket science.
                            I buy 420 forums

                            Comment

                            • Lizard King
                              Banned
                              • Mar 2004
                              • 1891
                              • 3.6.x

                              #59
                              Originally posted by Alfa1
                              I also do not see why on earth its not possible to just keep old urls. Off course its possible. Just create a new showthread.php file. That's not rocket science.
                              I have never questioned why IB never upgraded their sites , but if they again choose not to upgrade to vB5 , i think it is pretty easy to see the reason. While sites that upgrade fall within SE rankings and IB sites will have better targets. Again this is just a theory but anything is possible as we all know.

                              Comment

                              • gedsta
                                Senior Member
                                • Sep 2006
                                • 180

                                #60
                                Originally posted by Lizard King
                                With vBulletin 5 initial demo and changed ID's , there is no hope for us to stay with vBulletin.
                                Do you use vBSEO?

                                If so does what you say mean that vBSEO would not be able to reference the old URLs if they decide to release a new version?

                                If not that will

                                1) Kill vBSEO
                                2) Stop a whole load of big boards hoping to move to vB5 if and when it is ready

                                Comment

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