vBulletin to IPB back to vBulletin

[Neal]

Well I converted my largest site over to IPB and I liked the look and new features, but my site rankings and visits and members online dropped right down. I decided to go back to vBulletin and all is getting back to normal. Rather annoying really.

 

Still, i've decided to use the IPB forum on a new site for my local football club, will see how it goes.

[Brandon]

Ouch, I hate moving/converting sites and now you've done it twice.

 

How do you think you get past the bad rankings?

[Alex]

I should register for an account, but here I go.

 

Those bad ranks are completely normal. If you set up 301 redirects with the correct code, you should be fine after a week. You're "screwed" either way since vB 4.0 has a completely different URL handling mechanism than 3.x.

[Neal]

Well i'm missing vBSEO so that's another reason, my stats are back up again since going back but I know that's bots and people coming in from google links, etc. I'm hoping that if I do go for vB 4, vBSEO will sort out the URL's so things go well.

 

My heads spinning, not just with this damn bug i've got, but what the hell to do, heh. vB or IPB argh! Did I make a mistake moving back to vB?

[Brandon]

I should register for an account, but here I go.

Thanks for joining us Alex :)

 

My heads spinning, not just with this damn bug i've got, but what the hell to do, heh. vB or IPB argh! Did I make a mistake moving back to vB?

Well in a way you just reverted to what was working for you before. If do want to move to IPB or another script, you should look at all the options and make sure it's going to be the right move.

 

How have the members taken the shake up? or do they not seem to care?

[Neal]

Thanks for joining us Alex :)

 

Well in a way you just reverted to what was working for you before. If do want to move to IPB or another script, you should look at all the options and make sure it's going to be the right move.

 

How have the members taken the shake up? or do they not seem to care?

Not many seem to care, site been quiet for a couple of weeks now since the changes. It will pick up again, only my site for the town so i'm confident at the moment.

 

Tried vB4 too, nice and some nice features. Still prefer vB admin panel. But it's very, very buggy. No good for live yet.

[Stormraven]

There are things called 301 pages, here is some information about them:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection

 

On mine, we used a 301 page to tell Google that we had moved, this didn't effect our rankings. I'd consider contacting IPB support regarding this, if you've recently changed over to IPB, then they may be able to help you set up some 301 pages. Hope this helped.

 

Kind Regards

 

Stormraven.

[Alex]

Well i'm missing vBSEO so that's another reason, my stats are back up again since going back but I know that's bots and people coming in from google links, etc. I'm hoping that if I do go for vB 4, vBSEO will sort out the URL's so things go well.

 

My heads spinning, not just with this damn bug i've got, but what the hell to do, heh. vB or IPB argh! Did I make a mistake moving back to vB?

IPB's SEO function does as well as vBSEO. vBSEO is just an automation of what you would do normally, nothing exciting. Your stats are only backup because surely if this site is relatively new, you're not getting too much crawler attention. That makes for a buffer zone of time before the URL gets dropped. Yeah, vBSEO developers stated they would update for 4.0, but again, you're still looking at some downtime with that.

 

Thanks for joining us Alex :)

You're most welcome.

 

Well in a way you just reverted to what was working for you before. If do want to move to IPB or another script, you should look at all the options and make sure it's going to be the right move.

 

How have the members taken the shake up? or do they not seem to care?

Indeed. There's a reason a lot of people are dropping vB for Invision Community Forum. Once they get over the small learning, they realize how complete and powerful it is.