OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Welcome to Outdoorking Forum HELP Area Site Problems/Suggestions and Updates Move does not appear to have gone well

Don't know if everyone elses browser is doing this but if i go into google and search eg "Victa vc160" and click on an odk topic, it will not load the new site.

Also if I use the search bar in the new site, nothing comes up.

Seems like website traffic has been completely killed as well as no one can get to the google results

Hi Tyler,

Yes I mentioned that when the site first moved (hosted in Australia now) , there is no way to search the site with Google etc.

Can only click on the forums link at the top of the page or active threads and go through the site that way.

Cheers
Max,

I just tried the search here and it pulled up 200 results.

As the Google results of course the links are dead as ".AU" has to be added now for the new site.

I using FF 115.6 with NoScript and ABP active.

I'm not tech savvy enough but does that mean google will map the new website .au and properly link google searches soon

Because the forum is effectively dead - cant find old topics easily and next to no new subjects as few (new or existing members) can presumably find it and there is no google traffic.

if its left as is its pretty well dead in the water

It is for the administrators to see if anything can done in that respect.

All I know it took me nearly two weeks to find my way back in from the US. I took a stab at what the change was and got lucky.

But it could be worst as it is with one of my distributors that change their database program provider. I was a royal to even get back in to only the latest price files are not even loaded and the system crosses are all screwy. At least I would need parts until Springtime so they have time to get it straighten out. And I just found another distributor is also planning a major overhaul of their system too. Both these distributor are my main part
suppliers.

Gardner change to Microsoft database system and it demand me to allow cookies with no opt out. Currently I can't accept the cookie policy as it gives Microsoft free access to my whole computer system and I got data they simply don't need access to. It is proprietary data and software.

It looking like I will have to buy a laptop just to access their system that is not connected to the WiFi and Cat6 systems here.

The ODK Online Store has a notice on the Home page that it is closed until 5th February.

Presuming the Store owner/s are also the owner of the Repair forums seems likely the current situation may not be fixed for a while.

Let's hope things can be fixed. Migrating a website is not a simple matter.

I also prefer to avoid anything to do with Google wherever possible and when using DuckDuckGo for searching the links to ODK items don't work anymore.

Hi All,

We are at present working on the forum and are hoping that we can get it sorted out by the end of the month with the search bar because it was a great asset to the forum.

As to search engines we are also looking at that as well but it will take some time to work around because of the site address being changed.

Also all the old links (online store) are still showing up and the redirection of the site is working (www.outdoorking.com) but not the old links (to products) at this stage.

The search box on the new store seems to be working ok at this stage for people trying to find parts including model number searches etc.

Hello all, l've been out of action for a while, and am lost with this new site somewhat, l can not finde the manual download section,
looking for Rover 53177 53179 parts... thank you if someone can shove me in the right direction...
keep safe all. cheers

UPdate l found em.... but nothing on 53179, l found 53177/160 on another post.... thanks

Hi swampyro,

Here is the Ride On Manuals for ODK https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.a...-mower-parts-list-manuals.html#gsc.tab=0

This is the owners manual on another site https://www.manualslib.com/manual/142622/Rover-Ranger-53179.html


Manuals https://rover.manymanuals.com/garden-tools/ranger-53179

Cheers
Max.

It is the fourth manual down on the list. This is the link: https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.a...-information.html#Post7306&gsc.tab=0

Just download it

Dont like to sound like a broken record but two months down the track and its still all stuffed for me.

All the good history records we had built up are basically unsearchable, 90% of the stuff in google searches is gone due to it picking up 404's.

Hi Tyler,

If you try the google search bar on the forum and type in vc160 or Victa vc160 results will come up for the forum.

I have found that the less you type in with google the better the results are.

You also have the search option below your name and can use the advance search option to find information as well.

The google search bar will take some time as it has over 104,000 post to go through.

I hope that this is of some assistance to you all.

Hi Tyler and Bruce,

I'm no expert on websites, but it looks like when the Outdoorking site recently changed the old images are now no longer
viewable without logging into the site ,this now means the google bots can't index the web pages with the images meaning
a simple image search will no longer work ,I'm not sure why the google bots aren't indexing the web pages on this site for the
text as you should be able to google any old mower with outdoorking and it should be easily found even if you can no longer
do an image search.

When I looked up the host for ODK it said GoDaddy and if that's correct I know they have 24/7 help available
so it shouldn't be to difficult to get the pages indexed for google if they can sort it out.


https://aioseo.com/index-your-website-on-google/#submit-your-website-to-google-search-console

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-index/

Cheers
Max.

Hi maxwestern,

I wish it was that easy, but the issue is with links that are in the post from the old forum, which are broken because of the move.

If Google has broken links in a post it will not crawl them, so we have a long way to go before all pages are crawled.

This is one that I have just corrected: https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.a...tary-mower.html#Post100017&gsc.tab=0

It had images in it from the old forum which was:
{img]https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/u...1EAE5E2-255F-4798-8A1F-F2B8C336EE45.jpeg[/img]

Which I had to change to correct it to show:


Any assistance from members that can provide links to post that have errors would be greatly appreciated.

No problems Bruce, sounds like painstaking and very tedious work. If I see any ill let you know
Regards

Hi Bruce,

That does sound like a pain, pity there's not an easier way like sending a removal request to google for the old site links
then Google could crawl the new site. I see the problem if the old broken links on a page are stopping web crawlers but
the link below works and it has 2 broken links on it's page.

there are 2 broken links on this page except the page link works https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.a...-lawnmower-outboard-c1956.html#gsc.tab=0

here are the 2 old links that don't work on that page, it sounds like a lot of work if you need to correct every old link.
https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=69823
https://www.outdoorking-forum.com.au/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=72318



Cheers
Max.

They are now corrected and I am hoping to find an easier option to correcting the links.

Just waiting on a reply from the software supplier but at present just correcting the ones that I come across.

Thanks Bruce ,as soon as you repaired the links on the Rawco page ,I could see the images on the page without logging
into the site.

The strange part now is a google image search is not finding the Rawco mower and a reverse image search on tineye
can't find the image on ODK .The Google all search finds Rawco text on ODK without a problem and the advanced search
bar on this site has no problem with Rawco text and also finds one of the links you fixed.

Yes it would be good to find an easier option to correct the broken links.

I did read the 404 errors can take months to be removed from google so all may be fixed automatically but just takes longer.

It's interesting reading about the google search problems that I expect in future years will be automatically fixed with
Artificial Intelligence .

https://inteliqoservices.com/how-to-remove-404-error-pages-from-google/

https://bluemoxie.co.uk/removal-of-outdated-content/

Cheers
Max.

It all should be happening soon in the next week or two just waiting on a reply regarding the fix and the cost.

It has to do with the database and some code to fix it all which I have been told does not take long to do once implemented.

I am not willing to take the risk myself so will have to pay someone to do it so we don't lose any information.

We have quite a lot of images and links on the forum that need to be corrected.

Hi to All Members,

We are pleased to advise everyone that we have now updated all the images and links to forums on the site.

If you do find any issues with images or links, please let us know.