How to 301 redirect my vanilla forum to buddypress?

keshavhl

I tried to build a community with vanilla forums but faced a few issues that are not going to be addressed in coming few months. So I have started developing on buddypress and wordpress.

Now I want to redirect my old vanilla forum located at http://www.environmentabout.com/forum to my new buddypress community located at http://www.environmentabout.com/community with permanent 301 redirect. I tried to Google some relevant discussions but didn't find anyone.

Can you please share the code for 301 redirect from vanilla subdirectory to buddypress subdirectory?

Thanks in advance

x00

lol traitor...

there are literally hundreds of tutorials out there on google just search .htaccess 301

if you want to preserve the linkage it is more complex, but it doesn't look think you have a whole lot of posts anyway.

tbt I'm not sure why you are bothering with 301. I'd simply let vanilla fall out of propagation by removing it. One you have a user base you can worry about that.

You might use 301, if you made a change the url structure in an exiting forum that has been going for some time, to help your user, and not loose SEO.

keshavhl

I want to use 301 redirect because the content in my vanilla powered forum is indexed by google and If I don't redirect the forum to new buddypress community, it will be treated as a duplicate content.

Moreover, the links of the forum has been submitted to so many directories and I can't afford to simply delete the forum directory.

x00

you could do something like

RewriteRule /forum/discussion/[0-9]+/([a-zA-Z\-])+/?$ /community/topic/$1 [L,R=301]

you will probably best test it without R=301 first.

that is just one example linking topics, which relies on the title slug being the same you might want to link other things

personally if you didn't block robots then the damage may have already been done, but by damage I mean something so negilable google might have said meh, if it is registered. I don't think this is going to have any impact on your SEO whatsoever so long as you let vanilla drop out of propagation.

I can understand you wanting to keep the directories link but in that case you could just do something like

RewriteRule /forum(/.*)?$ /community [L,R=301]

this isn't really a vanilla specific topic though.

keshavhl

Thanks for the help @x00

Where am I supposed to add the code? In my root directory htaccess file or in /forum directory htaccess file?