This is an idea I had after seeing that merging two topics causes one of the two URL's to 404. Understandably, one of the topics will no longer exist, but why not make it 301-redirect to the one it was merged into? This would improve SEO somewhat, and keep any links that have been made to that topic from breaking post-merge. I think vBSEO did this on a vB forum I used to administer, and it seems like one of those little things that just makes sense.

Thought now might be a good time to bring this suggestion up again, seeing as the main theme of IP.Board 3.3.x is SEO improvements. Quite a lot of topic merging takes place on my communities, and it's annoying both to users and search engines when links to them break. Any chance we might see this added in the near future? Brandon once commented on the idea and said there was "real value" in adding it, but I haven't heard anything on the matter since.

This needs to be done. :/ It doesn't make sense for all of the links to the topic pre-merge to suddenly become broken.

Also suggested this recently. Something very basic that should be included, IMO.

Our forum members get upset when one of our moderators merges a new topic with an existing topic:

When this happens:

[*]Someone starts a new topic on a subject with a existing topic already created!!! Grrrrrrr....... :angry: [*]A "new topic alert", which includes a new topic URL, gets fired out to all those members who "follow" that forum. [*]The moderator (correctly) merges the new topic to the already existing topic (because the "new-topic-creating" member couldn't be bothered to see if there was already a relevant topic they could post on) [*]Forum members follow the link in the email alert, which of course goes to a dead end... [*]Irritated forum members send me rude emails!!! :cry:

Yes, the topic-merge function should include a creation of a 301 redirect to the remaining topic! Fully support this feature request!

This is so basic and could be implemented relatively easily but has been ignored for over a year now.

I completely agree. But not only does this need to be implemented so users don't end up hitting 404s if they've bookmarked the topic in question or received an alert/notification, there also needs to be a way for the user who created the duplicate topic to be informed that it has been merged with another topic.

I'm sure I remember Invision Board of many years ago would leave the duplicate topic in the forum, but if you tried to view it you would would automatically be redirected to the topic it had been merged with. This meant that the user who created the second topic would be able to find the topic it had been merged with, and wouldn't presume their topic had in fact been deleted.

+1

Bumping this.. Please add this.