# Problem with permalinks, or regex?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/problem-with-permalinks-or-regex/58686>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [2017 年 3 月 9 日午前 12:34 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problem-with-permalinks-or-regex/58686 "2017-03-09T00:34:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

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**Author:** ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)\
**Post date:** [2017 年 3 月 9 日午前 12:34 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problem-with-permalinks-or-regex/58686/1 "2017-03-09T00:34:59Z")

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I’m trying to improve the permalink redirects on the vbulletin importer. Vbulletin can have any of several URL formats. My solution is to create generic permalinks which will then be handled by `permalink normalizations`. Like this:

Old URL: [http://somesite/forums/f38/slug-blah-blah-blue-11769.html](http://somesite/forums/f38/slug-blah-blah-blue-11769.html)  
Permalink: oldlinks/topics/thread-11769

Normalization: `/forums\/f[0-9]+\/.+-([0-9])+\.html.*/oldlinks\/topics\/thread-\1`

![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/0/3/032496189b14a18a075e910e8bd3f5fd08a6639e.png)

It looks like it should work to me, but it’s not.

Have I missed a character somewhere?

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problem-with-permalinks-or-regex/58686)._