Hi,

I need to merge 3 forums into 1 but don't want to create a load of 404's that may effect rankings and search results.

A little background. The 3 forums represent a course which has been renamed 3 times by the course "regulator".

Forum 1 (the one i'm keeping) has 238 topics and 375 replies
Forum 2 (to be merged with forums1) has 305 topics and 908 replies
Forum 3 (to be merged with forums1) has 48 topics and 181 replies

Any suggestions/ help???

Thanks
Ben

By default, miniBB has an internal algorithm to handle forum-to-forum redirections with 301 status (moved permanently). This is present in the current version of miniBB. So, you would just need to move all topics to another forum, and you may use Multiple Topics Action add-on to move multiple topics at once. Probably it could take 20-30 minutes to arrange all topics, but at least, it is the currently available free solution for your purpose.

In case of more questions or suggestions, let me know.

Hi Paul,

OK, great. So use the Muliple Topics Action tool to move all topics to another forum and miniBB will do the rest with the 301 redirects?

sounds easy enough.

Once that is complete should i delete the forums i no longer need? or will this effect the redirecting?

Ben

Moving topic to another forum is handled automatically in the current version of miniBB. Whatever forum is used, whatever topic is moved. You could use Muliple Topics Action tool or move topics one by one :) It doesn't matter. Moving one-by-one means you could check at least one/some of them.

Right these days we're working at the Elvis tool, which I described shortly in my random blog. With that you would be able to check any URL for the status it gives and the URLs it redirects to; also much more. But this is not ready yet... you may search Google which results provide something similar for free for being sure moved pages give 200 (OK) status.

From what we have coded, it should not affect redirection even if you remove the older forum.

The most important is the topic's ID. The script will look up for it in all possible places, incl. Archives. If it's not found, then it will give 404 (in the current version; in the upcoming version it will give 410). So the forum's ID should not matter for this case.

ok , thanks Paul. Ill give it a go!

Ben