Hi everyone! I wanted to ask the following as we're at a stage whether we make the change or we stay with it.
We are currently running a MyBB forum using a plugin/mod that that rewrites the thread/forum URLs (via .htaccess/back end) from the usual /showthread?010101 to /thread-this-is-an-example
The above URL rewriting is achieved via .htaccess although there are some plugin options on the back-end as the plugin can be accessed via the admin control panel. The code doing th URL rewriting on .htaccess looks quite complex though (and long), at least to me, but I remember once asking a developer and he said it wasn't very complex.
While we are happy with MyBB, we're currently debating whether to jump on vBulletin or not. We have our reasons for migrating to vBulletin, and we know that if we screw up the URL rewriting we will kill all our search engine traffic, and this is something we simply CANNOT have happening.
We don't have any experience with vBulletin, but as far as I know there is an option to rewrite URLs to forum/thread titles. However, from what I've seen, this is how vBulletin rewrites threads:
/0829837-this-is-an-example
So vBulletin adds, by default, a random number prior to the title of the forum/page, I guess to ensure no duplicate URLs. On the other hand, MyBB and the MyBB plugin we use currently have the word "thread" prior to the title:
/thread-this-is-an-example
Likewise, for page 2, 3 etc on a thread, vBulletin rewrites as:
/0829837-this-is-an-example-2
Whereas our MyBB configuration is:
/thread-this-is-an-example?page-2
Oh, and by virtue of the plugin, any capital letters in the title are also capitalized on the URL, so we have:
/thread-Hello-my-name-is-Tom-and-I-am-from-the-USA
I've read that capital letter in URLs aren't a problem for search engines, but I'm just mentioning it as vBulletin would have all URLs by default as not capitalized.
My question is, how feasible is it to get the URL rewriting the same on vBulletin as MyBB? Is it possible to simply use the same .htaccess rewrite code or file? I am not asking about vBulletin per se, as I will ask that to a vBulletin technician. I am asking about how feasible is it to be able to have .htaccess rewriting the URLs exactly the same when we migrate to vBulletin. Is it possible to use some coding to tell a script to instead of rewrite URLs as per its default, to instead rewrite URLs as per the custom coding posted on .htaccess?
Our forum has about 10,000 pages, and many pages have some really good external backlinks and maintain good rankings. Migrating from MyBB to vBulletin would be a headache as it is, so I'd like to ask you folks about how feasible is it to maintain the same URL structure via .htaccess (e.g. use th same .htaccess code/directives etc). Or is this too risky or crazy and we're better off not doing the migration.
I would appreciate any help/input on this. Whether it is from a strictly .htaccess/rewriting point of view or any experience you may have migrating forums and keeping the URL structure intact.
Thank you all.
