Background

1. GitHub Pages now supports HTTPS.
2. I saw that Google search showed the HTTP version of the hyperlinks.
3. I want to convert add the existing “http://” to “https://”.

Problem

1. I changed “http://…” to “https://…” in the Admin settings for the disqus site of this blog.
2. The original comments disappeared!

How can I get back the original comments and correct the URLs of the links to my blog articles on Disqus?

Failed attempt

I tried to use the “Domain Migration Wizard”. Lacking knowledge in terms like “host”, I just clicked the button to proceed even though I saw that the original host name was recognised as “http://https://.”.

In the end, I messed up the URLs of the forum threads. After using the “Wizard”, I waited for about 20 hours, and then I saw that hundreds of links started with “http://https://vincentam.githhub.io/…”.

I read a lot of articles from the Web, but the problem that they’re facing weren’t the same as mine.

Solution

I finally decided to use the “URL Mapper”. When I read the official onine help page about this migration tool, I realised that I should give it a try. The moment that I opened the generated CSV file in a spreadsheet program, I knew that I had chosen the right way because this gave me more control over the URL of the posts on my blog.

I also added a script copied from konklone’s Gist for using HTTPS by defalut.

In the official documentation, a spreadsheet program is used to modify CSV files. In fact, if one knows regular expression, one would do batch text editing using some tools available in the CLI. For instance, I used Vim to do this last night.

This morning, I discovered that the URLs in the box “Promoted Discovery” were still wrong! This afternoon, I read a lot of related websites, just like what I did yesterday. I wasn’t sure what to do next. The URLs shown in the “Admin” page were finally correct, but those hyperlinks on the pages “View in discussion” on the white-backgrounded Disqus site weren’t.

Then I worked on something else, and at about 8pm tonight, all the URLs have finally been corrected.

Lessons learnt

I need to be patient and work on other things first after I’ve already tried all possible ways to solve the problem.

Final remarks

During the site migration, one couldn’t see the comments and the “Also on” box took one to wrong pages. I apologize for any inconvenience caused.