[Michael Morris]

I'd suggest leaving the db alone and writing a new viewtopic.php file with these contents, turning it into a simple redirecting file.

PHP Code:

<?php

if ($_GET['p'])
{
$p = "p=" . intval($_GET['p']);
}
else if ($_GET['t'])
{
$p = "t=" . intval($_GET['t']);
}

header("Location: http://www.yoursite.com/forum/showthread.php?" . $p);
?>