Forum backup resulted in SEO MOD changing url's

[AMD]

Hi!

I have experienced some problems with my forum so I had to go back to an earlier backup. Before this I had to copy the threads into new forums because I had to delete the corrupted ones according to some error in the data base.

This resulted in SEO MOD creating new url's. For example:

Before backup: -http://www.amdforum.se/board/ovrigt-om-amd-f66.html

After backup: -http://www.amdforum.se/board/ovrigt-om-amd-f166.html

As you understand this will conflict with Google results as the old url's wont work anymore.

As you also can see the numbers are much higher now than before. So it seems that it has not been reseted. So how do I have the SEO MOD start from beginning and not with these high numbers in url's?

//AMD

[SeO]

Our URL rewriting mods do not affect any how forum ids. The only type of matter that could occur with backup manipulation is with the files in phpbb_seo/cache/
In there, phpbb_cache.php, holds the config as well as the cached forum urls in case you activated forum url caching.
What can occur if you delete all files in there (cause other files are auto backup of the phpbb_cache.php file) is to loose SEO URL settings and custom forum urls.
The only possible messing scenario with forum url would be if you'd upload a phpbb_cache.php file from another install (local for example) and with forum url caching activated.
Since the forum url are stored in an associative array (id => 'custom-url'), you could in such case see a forum use a different custom url than before.

So make sure that you did not put back an old or wrong phpbb_cache.php file, in case you have a fresher backup of this file, upload it. You can as well take a look in the phpbb_cache.php.current file if you have one in the same dir, it's a backup of the last time you changed a setting in the SEO url, renaming it to phpbb_cache.php could be a solution too.

If you cached url with ids in your settings, cached url holds the id : forum-url-fxx.html, and if this xx id is not matching the key used in the associative array, (yy => 'forum-url-fxx.html') you could see xx id for forum yy in url.
But I doubt it's the case, since your forum id 166 seems to actually be displayed on -http://www.amdforum.se/board/ovrigt-om-amd-f166.html with correct title et all.

To me, the forum id looks like changed in the db directly.

Are you using custom forum urls ?

Can you see cached forum urls in phpbb_cache.php ?

With id ?

[AMD]

Thank you for your answer!

I am not sure about all settings since I host my forum by a forum service. So I dont have the possibility to check all this up, but I can ask of course.

However, there must be a solution for the SEO MOD to start naming the url's with lower numbers from 0 and up. And not as high numbers as 100 and up.

I dont think I can have the SEO MOD naming the url's exactly as before because I have another creating order of the forums now

Here is an example of the consequences that the backup has resulted in: http://www.amdforum.se/board/avslutade- ... r-f70.html

The above link is empty and the new working link is this: http://www.amdforum.se/board/avslutade- ... r-f91.html

//AMD

[SeO]

Did the forum ids actually changed in the db ?

If so, it's the backup to be guilty and there is not much to do beside fixing it before you import it again, because many thing later depend on the forum ID, so if they changed like this, you basically cannot trust your auth settings as well as the topic inside of each forum.
Are topics still n the proper forum after this event ?

[AMD]

Yes I think the forum ids changed in the db.

What will happen with Google now? Will Google remove the bad url's from its index and update with the new working ones? How long will this take? I have GoogleBot visiting my forum every day.

//AMD

[SeO]

It's really bad if forum id changed in the db.
And this can only come from the backup (either when backing it up or when importing it), unless of course, someone did all this in the acp, but I kind of doubt it.

So, there is no easy way to deal with that, as said, it can be problematic to keep this db as imported online because many other things, such as auth, later depend on forum ids.
So unless someone did the id change in acp (eg delete / re create all forums) then all other table depending on this where not updated while importing the db and are most likely messed up right now.

I think that the best thing to do would be to close the forum for some time, and create a local install of phpBB to import your backup in it to find out how badly thing where messed up.
Because for indexing, these new urls are like new pages, it's actually like if you had dropped all your forum and recreated new ones for bots. And there is no easy way to implement the redirect since you'd need to know all the old / new forum id associations.

The matter could be related to auto-increment being saved in the forum db backup, and no drop / create performed on this table. If you do not drop the forum table before you recreate it, all the data inserted later could start from the last auto-increment value, but it would as well imply that the insert do not mention any forum id, which would be the sign of a deficient backup.

Contacting your forum hosting service, the bug could come from them. How was this db backup performed ?

To help you more, I'd need to see at least the beginning of forum table dump you have, table structure and one complete insert (with a not passworded forum insert, no sensible data will be in there).

You can post PM me a zip;)