Thanks for making the old forums useless

[Spoon of Khyber]

I am sure there have been many threads on this, what a disaster the new forums are since any search that turns up old forum results is useless because in it's infinite wisdom, SSG changed the old forum url, rather than the new ones so they would both be searchable in a useful way...

 

[fireball241_jt]

Yeah. All search links are broken. Goggle etc. Are useless.

You can go to the Old forum and use the search bar, but it is not as good.

I have it in my Favs to go to old forum first after a search fails. I try to use the search eng title in the old forum search. Then if that does not work and it usually doesn't I click on home ddo and click there new forum link to post here.

:Roll

 

[axel15810]

It is unfortunate. I understand why they wanted forums.ddo.com to be for the new forums but using a different URL for the new forums such as community.ddo.com or discussions.ddo.com or boards.ddo.com so that all the old links didn't break would've been my choice. I personally have created dozens and dozens of youtube videos linking to the old forums in the descriptions and now those links are all broken. Also, anyone new player googling information about the game is now going to come across a sea of broken links which is the worst effect of this decision.

 

[fireball241_jt]

Yep. Drive away new players. Less $$$$.
The game looks broken. Bad first impression is everything in gaming. Too much competition.

Think about the new player, but experienced gamer just trying to build a character. They know to do the research, but it is too much of a pain to search. A few Google broken links and they just walk away.

The Devs did not put a lot of thought. They are just Devs. They don't always think in terms of money. Who ever makes the money decisions made a big mistake.

 

[Arcanaverse]

Its a tough call regardless. Either way they were going to end up with broken links. So I don't blame em for pushing the onus onto the few that maintain their links to manage their links. But I do think it was a giant mistake.

Search Engines. I completely agree with axel. Attracting a new player... better hope they hit the main page otherwise I'd assume this game was deleted. Its a terrible look in the primary space where people find information about the game.

In their defense though, if the links didn't change it could it likely would've created a similar problem with people not knowing the new forums even existed.

Have to imagine it'd be possible to have some sort of redirect portal where you can continue to the old forum post or point them to the new forums... but maybe that wasn't in the cards.

 

[fireball241_jt]

Its a tough call regardless. Either way they were going to end up with broken links. So I don't blame em for pushing the onus onto the few that maintain their links to manage their links. But I do think it was a giant mistake.

Search Engines. I completely agree with axel. Attracting a new player... better hope they hit the main page otherwise I'd assume this game was deleted. Its a terrible look in the primary space where people find information about the game.

In their defense though, if the links didn't change it could it likely would've created a similar problem with people not knowing the new forums even existed.

Have to imagine it'd be possible to have some sort of redirect portal where you can continue to the old forum post or point them to the new forums... but maybe that wasn't in the cards.

Why is it a tough call when I see it as a no brainier?

 

[Taraborn]

The search results should eventually fix itself as google crawls the old forums new url, but that could take awhile. Did Standing Stones request a
re-indexing of the old forums from Google?

 

[Cyran]

while I agree it look horrible for new players trying to find information about game but for people who are aware of the old forums new url it a little extra work but I would not say using google is useless now. It a little bit more work but it not that hard right clicking the results, copy url, pasting it into url bar and modifying.

For example if when you paste the url it start as https://www.ddo.com/forums then simply replacing the www with forums-old will get you where you want. I am sure I could even make a chrome extension that could auto do it fairly easy but not been a big enough deal yet to motivate me to do so. I still use google all the time to find stuff on old forums and just modify the url as needed.

 

[Arcanaverse]

Why is it a tough call when I see it as a no brainier?

Disclaimer that I have no inner knowledge of what goes on at SSG, but some of the things that I could've seen being in the 'for column'

- Site mapping
- Internal Integrations (anything that like customer service may use, or account access, etc..)
- External integrations
- legacy game code integrations (thinking maybe some myddo stuff)
- Public knowledge doesn't need to change (ie. players tend to be known for their long hiatus but may still remember the address/their bookmark wouldn't need to change)
- Documentation
- Communication templates
-

I could probably keep going, but the pattern here is the minimal impact on their systems/existing setup. Far more cost and time effective for deployment.

Scope alone may of been enough to justify it, but for all I know this was largely a solo act for Cordovan with maybe some aid from a contractor/vendor and the MTGO team just to get it up and running. By the url not changing, they could at least cover their end. Then any snafus with linking will eventually phase out over the long term.

Both come with risk and I'm sure there are even more variables at play here. In fact, smart money is on them realizing that as well. 17+ years is a lot to cover and minimizing risk from the forgotten or unknown is a reasonable direction to take.

 

[CherryBomb]

The problem isn't so easy to solve. Yes, you can easily edit the address to get to a top level forum page. But, the deep links (links with-in the pages) are not as simply alterable. You need copy the link, paste it and then edit. You cannot just click it since you will be sent to the error page and the link will be lost.

A programmatic approach would require a global edit with a scan of the text of each page which will attempt to identify the old links and replace them. The process would be to make a copy of the original source documents that has the altered links. This is a big project to accurately "fix" the problem.

Ok, now go ahead and write the code.

 

[SiliconScout]

Well it's PHP so you could build a translation/ re-director page. We did that at work when we had a major overhaul of our intranet. It intercepts the dead link and then with a little logic checks to see if it would be valid in the new structure and if it is then it adds a record to not have to do the lookup again and redirects.

At a very 10,000 foot view it basically does this.

• thisthing.intranet.com/otherplace/item changed to thisoldthing.intranet.com/otherplace/item
• requesting thisthing.intranet.com/otherplace/item would have it first check to see if a redirect record exists and if it did then it would go there
• If there is no record then it would see if adding the OLD resolves it, if so add the record and redirect.
• If none of that works then redirect to the failed page.

 

[SiliconScout]

You really REALLY don't need to scan or re-write a damn thing. This works for us really well

 

[Kryxal]

while I agree it look horrible for new players trying to find information about game but for people who are aware of the old forums new url it a little extra work but I would not say using google is useless now. It a little bit more work but it not that hard right clicking the results, copy url, pasting it into url bar and modifying.

For example if when you paste the url it start as https://www.ddo.com/forums then simply replacing the www with forums-old will get you where you want. I am sure I could even make a chrome extension that could auto do it fairly easy but not been a big enough deal yet to motivate me to do so. I still use google all the time to find stuff on old forums and just modify the url as needed.

Helpful, I was just clicking through and you don't even see the redirected URL that way. It would help if the page redirected to would give the original link and editing instructions for forum ... or just DO the edit and redirect for what it SHOULD be, can't be hard.

 

[Zokathra]

Maybe they can change the broken link page so that it doesn't say:

WE ARE CURRENTLY UNDERGOING MAINTENANCE
Yes, you're in the right place! Unfortunately we are not, but hope to be getting there very soon. Please check back later.

Because that page is no longer correct.

 

[Skoltr]

https://forums-old.ddo.com/forums/index.php?s=738770789bffacf78096c665e450e2b2

Just bookmark the page once your there, its what I did.

 

[Titus Ovid]

I use the cache version when I google search and if it is a good thread find it manually on the forum. It works but is tedious.
There is so much information on the old forums it would benefit all, if it was easier accessible.
If there is an easier way, please make it so.

Cheers,
Titus.