Invision Community 4: SEO, prepare for v5 and dormant account notifications By Matt Monday at 02:04 PM
meade916 Posted March 29 Posted March 29 Hello! I've been with invision for years and i have an issue that I'm not sure how to go about. I have 121k members, and over 3 million posts on my website. A lot of posts on my site have HTTP links from members posting links years ago or members having http links in their signature from years ago. My question is, how do I change all the links on every post to HTTPS without having to go through every single post and member one by one? Is there a way? My website itself is using HTTPS, but that doesn't change the links that have been posted over the years. I ask this because it deranks both my site and and others when it comes to SEO. Any help would be appreciated!
Sonya* Posted March 29 Posted March 29 Replacing all links with https is useless. You don't even know whether these old links now support https. If not, then you will create tons of broken links. And that helps nothing. I would use a plugin to make the links visible and active to members only. E.g., the https://www.ynwa.tv/files/file/27-ne-hide-content/ It hides external links from guests and search engines. And as a positive side effect, it can even boost registration for your community if you point out that the links are only visible to members 😉
AndyF Posted March 30 Posted March 30 (edited) It would be possible with a query to do this , an "update set replace" type of one , I'm extremely reluctant to post this due to the risk of: > Me not being 100% correct > Issue running it > Other concerns I wonder if you can add some .htaccess to do this which might be a lot easier. Edited March 30 by AndyF
Sonya* Posted March 30 Posted March 30 45 minutes ago, AndyF said: I wonder if you can add some .htaccess to do this which might be a lot easier. .htaccess only deals with incoming links. It does not apply to outbound links. I assume that topic starter means outgoing links, not internal. 17 hours ago, meade916 said: A lot of posts on my site have HTTP links from members posting links years ago or members having http links in their signature from years ago. Jim M 1
opentype Posted March 30 Posted March 30 I would buy a ‘link search and replace app’ with simple and regex functionality. While running global search-and-replace queries is somewhat dangerous, the app could just go trough the matching posts one by one, showing the old and the new link with an option to click the old and new link before clicking “skip”, “change” or “remove link and replace with …”. http to https changes would be typical, but there are more examples: Removing dead links entirely and replacing them with a note; Adding/changing affiliate links; Changing links from one domain to another after after takeovers or a rebranding (e.g. twitter.com to x.com); removing parts of of the domain (like www) or a specific folders after the external site changed their structure … Claudia999 1
Randy Calvert Posted March 30 Posted March 30 (edited) As @Sonya* noted in her reply, just mass search/replacing does not necessarily solve your problem with outbound links unless you're 100% positive any HTTP link actually does work with HTTPS. If this is SERIOUSLY a concern for you, use @Nathan Explosion's resource as it's the most elegant solution. Simply don't give Google links! Nathan does fantastic work and I would highly recommend his stuff! In the grand scheme of things, I would personally focus more on good quality content vs worrying about a few broken links that may exist on the site. It's like focusing on the dollars instead of the pennies or nickels. Put your time/effort into the stuff that has the biggest impact on scoring, Edited March 30 by Randy Calvert
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