Request - Step By Step Guide to Moving SMF Forum

[CR Forum]

Dear all
I am writing after spending significant time and effort to find a reasonable solution to what I am hoping to achieve. My target is very simple actually. My forum is installed in the root directory at my-domain.com right now. I am changing the domain ( but not my host) say to my-new-domain.com. The files will stay where they are since I will be asking my host to change the primary domain for my account. This means that as long as my domain nameserver points to my current host, and have it set up as my primary domain for my shared hosting account, I can have the forum running at my-new-domain.com within a very short time and with minimal help.

But the hard part starts here. I have more than 30K posts, more than 8k topics, and more than 15k members. I have thousands of indexed pages on search engines and my forum ranks as 1st or 2nd for most key words for the niche. I am hoping to find a way so I can redirect each and every page that is indexed to the new domain without generating any 404 errors, so that over the next few months a seamless transition to the new domian takes place. I am not an expert at this, and I am aware that this needs to be achieved through the manipulation of the .htaccess file.

I am hoping that somebody can write a step wise guide for folks like me who are trying hard to find a clear and succinct guide for this process.

Thanks for your attention
Sam

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Sorry, I was originally answering a question you didn't actually ask - Got siderailed there

Your easiest way would probably be to make your old domain simply redirect to your new domain,.

[CR Forum]

Sorry, I was originally answering a question you didn't actually ask - Got siderailed there

Your easiest way would probably be to make your old domain simply redirect to your new domain,.

I would like to add a little clarity here. of course my current my-domain.com will become an addon domain and my-new-domain.com will become the primary domain. What I am hoping to specifically achieve is that all my current indexed pages will land up to the same exact page ( and not the index page) on the new domain. So it should be a page - to - page redirect for all pages that are indexed. I tried doing it ( as an experiment) form cpanel but the only page that was redirecting was the index page. If I went to google and pulled up one of my pages, it was not getting redirected anywhere. This means I need to add a whole lot more to the htaccess file I guess for a page-to-page redirection.

My questions
1. Is this possible?
2. If yes, how?

Thanks a lot for your willingness to help.
Cheers
Sam

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I believe this should work

Code Select Expand


#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com$[OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]


[Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail]

I suspect that you haven't use repair_settings.php yet. Follow the steps as stated by LexArma for the redirect from old domain to new domain. At the same time, run repair_settings.php on your forum new domain and change all its url to new domain and save it. No need to change the path or move any forum physical files at all. An extra advise, change your cookie too to your new domain name (yes this is a very strange advice from me ).

[CR Forum]

Thanks all. I have not done any move yet. I am just gearing myself for a move and making sure that I have all the necessary information for the move. You are free to browse my forum at www.clinicalresearchforum.com.  Will keep you all posted. Hoping to do this move in the next 2-3 days
Regards
Sam

[Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail]

Nice theme. Well done I'd say. Will be waiting for your update then.

[CR Forum]

Nice theme. Well done I'd say. Will be waiting for your update then.

Thanks a lot for your words. Eid Mubarak to you too

[Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail]

Eid Mubarak and God Blessings to all fellow Muslims wherever they are.

[CR Forum]

Talked to my host. They said that for changing the primary domain on my account I will have to wait until December 10th. So will update you all kind people only after that date.

@ahrasis - Keep the new avatar. It's nice

[CR Forum]

Ok folks. I am back and I seem to have a problem. I have migrated my forum to www.clinicalresearchsociety.org. Everything is working very well there. I created an addon domain for clinicalresearchforum.com in my sharing hosting account and created a htaccess file and put in the following there:

#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.clinicalresearchforum.com.com$[OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^clinicalresearchforum.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.clinicalresearchsociety.org/$1 [R=301,L]

Still when I go to clinicalresearchforum.com, it is not redirecting.  Neither are any SERP links from google. Need urgent help. I have put up a temporary index page at clinicalresearchforum.com just to tell visitors that we are migrating to a different domain.

Thanks and keenly look forward to some help here.

[CR Forum]

Update:

I had the Bluehost support help me a little. They created a new htaccess file with the following in it:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^clinicalresearchforum.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.clinicalresearchforum.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "http\:\/\/clinicalresearchsociety\.org\/$1" [R=301,L]

Everything is working fine. The only thing I notice is that the new urls have ?wwwRedirect in front of them. Is this normal? How should I proceed from here? Should I just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride ?

[Illori]

some searching on this forum lead to http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=312299.0

[CR Forum]

some searching on this forum lead to http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=312299.0

Changed my forum url in features and options to without "www". Solved the problem. Thanks a ton

[CR Forum]

Hello all
I have been testing my forum at www.clinicalresearchsociety.org. Most of the things are working fine. I noticed though that the Recently updated topics on the index page still point to the old domain (www.clinicalresearchforum.com). I have run the repair setting  and did everything. What could be problem. Do I need to change the url somewhere else as well. Please guide.
Thanks
Sam

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

That sounds strange if everything else works ok, but you night want to try emptying your cache.

[CR Forum]

That sounds strange if everything else works ok, but you night want to try emptying your cache.

Emptied the cache. No difference. I observed that only the new posts have the previous domian. If you go to the recently updated topics and hover over the most recent posts, they still show the previous domain which is strange.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

And all your URL settings were changed in the repair_settings.php?

[CR Forum]

And all your URL settings were changed in the repair_settings.php?

I guess so but let me run it again to see if everything is alright. I will get back.

[CR Forum]

Ran repair_settings.php again. There is no problem in there. Still the most recent posts are pointing to the previous domain. Very strange! What could be the reason.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

OK, I see where this is coming from. You see, the "old topics" have the www. infront of them, the new ones don't. Still I don't quite understand why it would choose to show the old domain instead of the new, if repair_settings.php showed all urls changed to the new one. Please, where you removed the www. infront of the domain, double check you used the new domain.

[CR Forum]

There is one more thing that I noticed. When I go to these recent posts that are still pointing to the previous domain, I immediately get logged out. But when I click on the ones that show the current domain, I am logged in. This is a little frustrating since most my members will be facing this issue as well right now when they would be trying to respond to the newer posts. In fact I created a new post but now I am trying to delete it but when I go to it, I am logged out and don't see the link for removal. Experienced support folks are requested to help.
Thanks

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I could take a look at it for you, if you would PM me a temporary admin account.

[CR Forum]

OK, I see where this is coming from. You see, the "old topics" have the www. infront of them, the new ones don't. Still I don't quite understand why it would choose to show the old domain instead of the new, if repair_settings.php showed all urls changed to the new one. Please, where you removed the www. infront of the domain, double check you used the new domain.

Forum url in repair-settings.php states http://www.clinicalresearchsociety.org. Should it stay that way since that is what it recommends.

[CR Forum]

I could take a look at it for you, if you would PM me a temporary admin account.

Sent. But the site has gone down for some reason. I will check with the host. You could investigate at your end in the mean time if you can.
Thanks

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

It seems I can't reach the site at the moment either, so we'll just have to wait for now.

[CR Forum]

Update from Bluehost:

Nick: [11:28:25 PM] I apologize for the inconvenience. Currently one of our administrators is working on the server. The admin notes read:
Error
There is an active server uptime note:

* Kernel upgrade - Rebooting for new kernel. ETA 15 minutes

I apologize for the inconvenience. but our admins will have it back up and running again asap

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Ok, I got in at least for now - so I'll take a look.

[CR Forum]

Do note that you get logged out when you go to these newer posts.

[CR Forum]

I can see that all the posts are now pointing to the old domain.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I noticed that as well, and I'm baffled as I didn't do anything to the urls....

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

OK, it was your Pretty URLs mod doing it - I still can't figure out what caused it to do that. Do you wish to use the mod?

[CR Forum]

Yes I would like to use the mod. I have seen good seo effect and right now I have more than 12000 indexed pages that have been rewritten by this mod. It is not a very friendly mod - I know and I have had a love hate relationship with it right from the beginning. What can be done ??

[CR Forum]

Could you look in the .htaccess file. I did open that file and may have changed some stuff but I am quite positive I didnt. Prettyurl writes a lot in that file.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

At the moment, I am unable to access your cPanel (due to being on a company network not allowing it) so, sorry can't help much with that. But good news is, right now it seems all your links point to the right place at least

[CR Forum]

Thanks a ton. You have access to admin and cpanel. When you get time later, may be you could have another look. I am sorry if I am asking for too much. In the mean time would you recommend a new install of pretty url to see if that fixes the problem?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

It could help - uninstalling it, and reinstalling it. I'm just guessing here though, I am unfamiliar with the inner settings of that mod.

[CR Forum]

Ok I will do that and leave an update here. Catch you later then. Thanks.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Please do let us know then

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Heyyy - The answer is here http://code.google.com/p/prettyurls/wiki/TroubleShooting

Links point to old domain after moving forum...

[CR Forum]

While researching this, I found the following page: http://code.google.com/p/prettyurls/wiki/TroubleShooting. I tried doing this myself but couldnt. I will need some help. I think it will nail the problem.

[CR Forum]

Ah! looks like we landed up on the same solution. I will need some help though with this. When you get time, please do try,
Thanks

[CR Forum]

I tried the fix by creating a new php file in the root directory but got the following error on opening it in the browser:

Notice: Undefined index: in /home1/clinica9/public_html/Sources/Load.php on line 1620

I think I will need your expert help to solve this once we now know what the fix is.
Hope I get the much needed assistance.
Thanks

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I'll get back to you later, unless someone else cuts in before - since I'll be at work the next 7 or so hours, and unable to do much while at it.

[CR Forum]

I'll get back to you later, unless someone else cuts in before - since I'll be at work the next 7 or so hours, and unable to do much while at it.

I will wait. I won't go in myself since I am not sure if I will break something. Thanks again.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

While waiting, you might want to see if this has been already answered / ask about this in Pretty URLs 1.0RC3 - Updated for SMF 2.0 RC4

[CR Forum]

Went through the thread and it seems like many folks have the same problem but no definitive fix has been provided by anybody. I will wait for you or one of your colleagues to intervene if possible.
Thanks.

[CR Forum]

I think I figured this out somehow. I went in to phpmyAdmin and cleared the cache from smf_pretty_urls_cache database. Everything seems to be fine as of now. I will keep testing for a while and if the problem is resolved, I will mark the topic as solved. Thanks for your help.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

I'm very happy to hear you made progress - Have things been working ok now?

[CR Forum]

Completely fixed and solved !!
Thanks so much for the support.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Great! You're welcome.