Redirecting most old Postnuke pages to the new Zikula site

The first order of the day is to redirect old pages to the new pages.

For this, go to your old sitemap, and see the links that you have. If your site is not very heavy, you can redirect each page individually from the old permalink structure to the new one.

Create a file called .htaccess in your root folder (where your index.php is) and put the following into it:

Options FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

Then, we will be writing in our redirects. If there is already an .htaccess in the root folder, just edit it to add your redirects to it (make sure the above lines are present already, or add them in):

RewriteRule ^Article1.htm$ http://www.foobar.com/foo/bar/ [R=301,L]

http://foobar.com/Article1.htm is where the article used to be (you don't need to put in the whole url) and we are now sending it to the new location. Refer to your old sitemap, and point everything to its new locations as separate lines.

This will tell the search engines about the new locations, as well as redirecting any referral links pointing to the old locations along with the traffic and good karma.

For a very large site, this method may not be practical. In that case, you have to make tough choices. Save what you can, and pray for the rest.Some suggestions.

1. Figure out the pages with the most links and traffic, and be sure to redirect those specifically.
2. Install your sitemap, and point the url for the old sitemap to the new one, so that all engines coming to look for info at your site will directly go to the new information, though they came out of habit to the old sitemap.
3. See if there are patterns you can roughly redirect (rather than shelling out 404s) For example, anything with a certain module name, goes to the page for that module.
4. Edit page content of index locations of new pages where possible (that haven't been individually redirected) - for example, the main downloads page where all downloads are getting redirected to, can contain an index of downloads and their new links for quick reference and manual click through.
5. It helps to have your 404 error (page not found) page describe what's happening, and assure visitors that things will soon be smooth again, in the meanwhile, to navigate using the very convenient options you will provide.
   

You can use RedirectMatch for this stuff:

RedirectMatch (.*)\.pdf$ http://www.foobar.com/downloads/


Be sure to put your RedirectMatch list after your redirects, so that specific redirects go to their accurate pages before the slack gets taken care of.

So download number 64 may not redirect to the exact page, but all downloads will go to the main downloads page. This is better than 404s. With some study of the older and newer link structures, it will be posssible to use regex to get quite accurate redirects, particularly if you aren't using short urls (though that kind of defeats half the point of the upgrade)


RedirectMatch (.*)\.gif$ http://www.foobar.com/downloads/$1.gif


Test. Test. Test.

Issues with redirects will be visible instantly, so if things work, they work. If not, tweak. There are abundant resources on the net to use .htaccess redirects. Search. Sometimes, inexplicable issues can happen which are peculiar to your server, software, installed modules, or other things, so if something is working for the world, but not for you, don't lose hope. There are enough websites in the world and someone or the other has experienced your settings too. You'll be sure to find references that work.

Last, but most important:

• Keep a sharp eye on hits from search engines to your new url structure - indicating that that engine is now aware of the change on your site.
• Keep an eye on your traffic sources - referrals in particular, and share updated links where possible - most people will appreciate having updated information to replace outdated information (though, sometimes it just might trigger some lazy ones to delete your link and leave it at that, so see how well you know them)
• Keep an eye on your error log for two things:

1. 404s: which are the pages that have large numbers of 404s? You may want to redirect them specifically, or as a pattern to some page.
   
2. 500s: Internal Server Error - these can sometimes happen when your .htaccess gets too large, or is creating issues and will crash your site till they are resolved - urgent.

Following this should get much of your site back visible from your earlier links, while ensuring that the transition to new links is happening smoothly in the background.

Has anyone experienced Technorati working perfectly?

Its a rather silly subject to post about, but my curiosity got the better of me.

I went to the technorati site to have a look if they had indexed that blog I was having trouble with (and this one) and I see:

Doh! The Technorati Monster escaped again.

We're currently experiencing backend issues and are working to resolve them as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Like this. Nice look, BTW. Dysfunctional for the site, but clean, aesthetic feel. Maybe the site is better down..... Don't believe me? See this:

Yesterday, it was an apology about some search and indexing problems they were having.

Almost all the time, there is someone or the other with blogs flagged for review, not indexed, links not indexed.....

This is of course idle curiosity..... I don't have a single blog that ever gets any traffic worth mentioning from there, so it doesn't really matter to me if they shut down the site on a whim. I never went there in the first place except for some occasional curiosity, but if you use Technorati for promoting your blog for more traffic.....

And curiosity gets me again. I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this place working like it was supposed to; and out of idle curiosity, what was it like?

How many backlinks do I really have?

Was just checking the back links for my blog Footprints on the mountainside, which is about my expereinces and reflections about my work in the outdoors and training. This was inspired by my recent problems with Technorati indexing my blog....

The more I looked into this, the more confused I got. Apparently, not only every system has its own ways of counting the links, but things differ within them as well. I tried different ways of looking at this. Each one had its own results and led me to different understandings on what these resources looked at, but little understanding on how many backlinks I really  had.

Not even going to speak about Alexa here, since it has nothing to do with links....

Outside tools like backlinkwatch show about 263 links to this page. When I login to my wordpress dashboard, the Technorati Incoming Links Plugin finds links to me on Technorati (never mind that they have stopped indexing my blog), while google blog search shows no links to this blog...... My dear old wordpress thinks me linking to another post on my own blog is a link too and shows it as a trackback...... while this is misleading, I like the feel of something being happy to index absolutely every link I have that it finds....

Then for the Google thing..... The "External Links" in my Webmaster Tools thingy says I have 463 links pointing to my blog, but the index stats show one link.

Searching for my link on the net excluding my blog gives me these results-->

So now, I am just wondering when everyone will agree about how many links people have......

In the meanwhile, I have decided to let them do their job, and I will do mine.

Technorati mess

I really don't know what the matter is with Technorati. I rarely check what's happening with my blogs there, so it came as a surprise to see my blogs as having been pinged 23 days ago. This is of course nonsense. My blogs ping technorati (and half the world) each time I make a post.

Then I searched for it to see if anyone else has similar problems, but most of the posts I found were from two years ago. I emailed their support, and am still waiting for a reply.

I found some technorati post explaining how they were not indexing 2.3 version blogs because of some vulnerability, but my version of Wordpress is always the latest - I update the instant I come to know.

The strange thing is that out of my four blogs:

• Footprints on the Mountainside seems to have vanished from their index, though it shows up complete with blog reactions and authority in my profile. This is a wordpress.
• Life As I Find It is also a Wordpress, with much of the same everything (and on the same server), but it is fully indexed.
• Adventures in India is a Postnuke I write to sometimes, and it is not even a blog, but fully indexed, though it shows some ancient posts as recent.... but I can live with that.
  
• Nerd In Progress - this blog - is a Blogger thing, and it is indexed until 2 days ago.
• My HTML website Wide Aware is also indexed (of course no latest posts) but authority 11 being registered.

I really don't understand what is happening. There seems to be no logical pattern. One Wordpress is indexed, one is not, one Blogger stopped being indexed two days ago, the Wordpress getting indexed is showing latest posts instantly. The Postnuke needs to be pinged, but indexes pretty fast too. The HTML site seems to be fine. It is not even as though there is a pattern with all my blogs having problems..... can't figure out where to start looking at this from.

Actually, I'm not sure I need to look at anything. I don't depend on Technorati in any case. I'm just getting hyper because I like everything to work. So I'm going to ignore it, and let Technorati figure their own life out, while I enjoy mine.

Update: I tried something different and discovered something interesting. I tried to claim my blog again. It wasnt' indexed, so it shouldn't matter, right? Wrong. Technorati wouldn't let me claim it, and finally directed me in the right direction...... straight into their FAQs.

The bottom line of the matter seems to be that this blog, and my other Wordpress blogs have been flagged for review (no clue why). The details of it:

When I try to find my blog in the Blog Directory, I get the Sorry :~( message.

Your blog may be flagged for review......

Getting the "There was a problem claiming your blog" message immediately?

If the system will not allow the blog claim to go further than the first step, then your blog has been flagged for review.....

Most recent posts not indexed AND "Last Pinged" date IS NOT updating?

If pinging Technorati manually does not work (After the really obvious suggestion of pinging it...)

If you are new to Technorati and claimed your blog, and you've tried pinging and the "Last Updated" does not change, your blog may still be pending review. If this is the case, please understand that it may take some time for the review and for indexing to continue for your blog. Claiming your blog puts gives your a higher priority in the review, so be sure to claim your blog!

Oh fabulous, so this takes me back to my loop. My blog is pending review and not cleared, so I must claim in, which is not allowed because my blog is pending review........

There are suggestions to contact support on each of these pages, and I have contacted support from each of these pages and for each blog separately, in addition to my earlier email...... Nothing from them so far except the automated email that my email was received, and the support staff has a lot of work to do.

Have I mentioned that I am sooooo not happy with this shoddy state of affairs at Technorati?