Transferring Everything from One Domain to Another

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Transferring Everything from One Domain to Another

I want to move from one domain to another one that is shorter and (hopefully) easier to remember, but I also want the transition to be as seamless as possible.

I'm a coder so I know about 301 redirects and I intend to use them, but is there something easier than manually adding entries in my .htaccess file?

The website is static with the exception of the blog, which is under the /blog/ directory and powered by WordPress. I want it redirected to my new domain name. File and folder structures don't change. Isn't there some kind of wildcard thing for this?

Why not leave the web site unchanged, and [temporailly] let the both the old and the new domains assume the IP of the site, at the level of DNS ?

In other words.

Let the DNS setup for the existing domain as-is (for now)
have the DNS of the new domain assingn the particular server name to the IP of the web server (or preferablly to a 2nd IP, also assigned to this very site).
In a few months / whenever the old domain is soon to expire, check what residual traffic may still be using the old domain name (Old IP), and for them only, add a small piece of text somewhere in the UI to inform them of the new domain.

mjv 2009-10-17 03:39:24

I'm not sure, as this would cause duplicate entries in Google and stuff like that, possibly hurting my search rankings.

Brandon Wang 2009-10-17 04:01:54

The introduction of a new domain will have the effect of dividing the back-links and therefore lowering the PageRank. But unless you wish to keep the new domain a secret of sorts (in hopes that all sites linking to your will continue exclusively using the old domain, and keep its PR high), some splitting will happen. Incidentally the DNS-based solution proposed, does not affect directly the promoting or demoting of any URL, it only allows either URL to find the server; the decision on how and where to advertise the new URL is independent from this.

mjv 2009-10-17 04:27:33

What type of web server is the site being hosted on? If its on Apache, you can use the RedirectMatch command

tschaible 2009-10-17 03:40:24

How would I implement that into an .htaccess file? It's the only thing I have access to.

Brandon Wang 2009-10-17 04:04:02

You can use RedirectMatch directly in your.htaccess files. FileInfo has to be in the AllowOverride configuration. You'd have to talk to you hosting provider to see if its enabled.

tschaible 2009-10-17 13:21:32

ansaurus

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Transferring Everything from One Domain to Another

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