I really really hope that when you make a new converter there can be some sort of
LONG process that will look at every thread for patterns in the body of the post
and convert the URL from the old style (old forum) to the new forum url

It doesn't make sense to have to have support and maintain legacy code after conversion

that means having a JOIN table between OLD forum IDs and IPB IDs or also have to have
the old php scripts in and config file to redirect the OLD to the new.

I would love to see this be done now on existing site as I can never seem to rid myself
of the old form stuff and then there is that extra baggage of the join table.

When a smart converter would have just did a GREP on the thread and replace the old URL to the NewURL

no need for any translation / join / redirect.

We don't do any joins on the link table for redirects, as far as I'm aware. We simply use a select query with the foreign ID in the redirect scripts and then pass the user along to the new URL based on the new IP.Board ID.

Additionally, the Redirect scripts are still necessary, even if we do try to update the post content (which... really isn't even feasible in any reliable way for all sites) to change the URL's in the event there is an external site that references the old URL. So the redirects are still very much necessary, even under that circumstance.