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View Full Version : Old to New forum Cross Reference



Tom Westbrook
25-May-2006, 12:12
To help people fix broken links pointing to threads on the old forum, I've put together a thread cross reference located at http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/thread-xref.html. It maps the old forum's topic IDs to the new thread ids. The page is nearly 2MB in size & has over 17,000 lines, so if you can, save it locally after loading it the first time.

Basic Instructions

Visit the Cross Reference page (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/thread-xref.htm). Wait for it to load completely (it's BIG). Save it locally if possible.
Do a browser search for the old topic ID from your old URL. The ID is the number just before the ".html".
In the column to the right of the old ID you found is the New ID. Copy the link from the New_Thread_ID column.
Replace the old URl in your link with the new one.
Save document and test the new link to be sure it works.

For instance, say you have a link to a thread from the old forum about Packard Shutters:

http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/505167.html

The old topic ID is shown in red. So, you copy that ID and search for it in the cross reference using your browser's Find or Search function. Once you find that old number in the cross reference, you'll see the new thread ID in the next column to the right--the new number is linked to the new thread on this site. You can copy the new link and use the new URL to correct your broken link. So in the example above that old link becomes

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=16594

If you're typing URLs manually, but sure to change the '/lfforum/' part to '/forum/' along with other changes.

Hope this helps.
Tom

PS: Articles on the Home Page didn't change so those URLs are still the same as the old ones.

Janko Belaj
25-May-2006, 15:34
Tom, how about permanent redirection script? If you have so many hits to the old forum that you need such huge page... and you probably have a lot of references on others sites and search engines... if you already have array of OLD_ID -> NEW_ID all you need is some script that will handle redirection... just an idea.

Tom Westbrook
25-May-2006, 15:51
We're not seeing so many hits from old URLs--except from search engines, and they will fix themselves. I just wanted to give people a way to fix links in their web sites or bookmarks if they want a fairly easy way to do it.

Tom Westbrook
26-May-2006, 08:14
Thanks to Janko Belaj (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/member.php?u=4260), who wrote a clever little PHP script, we now have an automatic redirect from the old thread URLs to the new ones. It only works for old URLs in the form ".../lfforum/topic/123456.html" from the old site, but will do the trick for the majority of searches on the search engines and in home page links.

WARNING: We will eventually remove this translator, probably after the search engines have re-indexed the site. So you still need to fix links in your web sites (if any). It just makes it easier than the above report to find replacement URLs.

As an example, click on this link:


http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/502580.html

You should end up on the same thread on the new site:


http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=14038

Final thanks to Janko for working on this solution!