Danger in moving to vb3 & losing links!?

[FlyBoy73]

We're getting ready to move to vB3 when gamma comes out but there is one MAJOR concern that I and a few others have.. Losing our links when we move to vb3!

I have over 50,000 links/refs in Google alone and I am using SkuZZy's archiving hack. What will happen when I switch to vb3 and use the integrated version, which I believe was designed by Teck? Will Google drop all of my links (and everyone else's who have been building up their indexed links in SE's with SkuZZy's hack) and start over? It has taken me 9 months to reach this many links. Google only indexes so many each month.

If anyone has any ideas or facts relating to this, I could really use the input. My advertisers and those that are about to sign on won't be very happy if my traffic takes a nose dive.

Thanks!
David

[FleaBag]

I'm pretty sure the new style links are backwards compatible with the new style in vB3, so as long as the files stay in the same place I don't see whyyou would have any problems with lost traffic from Google.

[Erwin]

You should get more pages linked into Google with vB3. vB3 also has its own archive.

[GlitterKill]

They archive links are not compatible.

VB3 creates archive links like this to a thread:
http://www.pimprig.com/dev/forums/archive/index.php/t-10557

Skuzzy's hack creates links like this:
http://www.pimprig.com/forums/archive/topic/10557.html

The "dev/" in the first link is due to it being in a dev folder...

So basically, is there a way to get the new archive ssytem to match the old formatting of urls?

IE:
archive/topic/10557.html
instead of...
archive/index.php/t-10557

I tried typing the old format on teh new forum url and it did not work. So backwards compatibility is certainly not there.

I share the same worries. I don't want all the links that I have in google to suddenly become invalid.

[Zachery]

google will spider the site just fine in vb3

[GlitterKill]

I know it will...

My problem is that the TONS of links Google already has for us will no longer be valid. See what I mean? it will be like anll over again!

[Zachery]

considering google reindexes a site once a month i dont think ti will be that big of a problem however you might be able to make a cutom 404 to redirect them to the forumhome >.<

[NTLDR]

I've just hacked the archive to use the link style used by SkuZZy's hack which I used in vB2 and not the style used by default.

[GlitterKill]

Check your PMs NTLDR. :)

[FlyBoy73]

considering google reindexes a site once a month i dont think ti will be that big of a problem however you might be able to make a cutom 404 to redirect them to the forumhome >.<

Yes, but it won't re-index, say.. 50,000 per month.. It builds up.. So, you loose them all, and you are not going to get them all back the next month.

[Infopro]

I moved my forums to a new subdomain and added a redirect from old forums URL to new forums. Google was there the next day at the new forums and has not left yet.
New threads are showing up on google already as well as the old ones that forward you.

[jw791]

I've just hacked the archive to use the link style used by SkuZZy's hack which I used in vB2 and not the style used by default.
Would you mind posting your code change? I don't know php and I've seen my archive page views drop by 90% since going to vb3 - my googled links are dead-ending :(