404s on all external and internal links to forum threads

[Dan Robinson]

I've noticed this happening on any links to forum threads inside or outside of the site. Apparently there was a change some time ago that modified the directory structure of the site. Google still has nearly everything indexed and ST threads still show in the results, but they all 404.

For example, this thread shows up in Google:

https://stormtrack.org/community/threads/recommended-chaser-equipment-list.23013/

But the actual URL is now:

Recommended Chaser Equipment List

From my website I often get the request from newbie chasers / spotters to give them information about what equipment they need to get started. Alternatively they may ask what training they need. I'd like to post one such reply I created so that other startup chasers / spotters can have quick...

stormtrack.org

It appears that the issue is the "community" subfolder used to be in the URL, and now it isn't. This should be easy to fix with either a htaccess 301 redirect rule or a setting within the forum itself to add "community" back into the site structure. I think the htaccess option would be less likely to cause issues, as the other may require a deep overhaul of the database.

The 301 redirect rule would simply be that for any url containing /community, it would replace "/community" with "/". For example:

/community/threads/name-of-thread

would forward to

/threads/name-of-thread

The cost of not fixing this is not just all of the 404s making threads unreadable to potential visitors, but will be a huge loss in SEO. All of the old URLs have tons of backlinks that boost the site's overall search engine rankings. To search engines, the site is basically starting from scratch in its backlink profile and page indexing.

 

[Mark Gressman Jr]

I've been reading through old threads for the last few years and noticed this a lot. I don't know much about website design and figured they were lost to the ether, so I never bothered to mention it. If it could be squared away that would be awesome, but again, I don't know how involved that is. Just happy to have all the info I have been able to access.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

The URL's changed about 2 months ago. I used a quick find/replace to fix the links coming from my site. Google will eventually update but there may be a way to redirect anything in /community/ to the same URL without community to maintain continuity.