Changing Domains: Directing Old Site to the New Site with htaccess

For SEO purposes, in most cases it is advisable to maintain your current domain name.

However, if you decide to change it, you need to 301 redirect the traffic from the old domain to the new.

To do so, you just need to add (or edit) a htaccess file to the root of the old site. The contents of the .htaccess should be the following:

Code:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Replace www.domain.com with the domain of your new site.

Any page request on the old site, will automatically get sent to the same page on the new domain.

This helps save you from losing traffic during a domain change, and also helps the search engines discover the new location of the content.

Thanks man

Hi Joe

thanks for this code above however i have a small question:

what can be the extra line in .htaccss to redirect
http://h-zaman.baitona.net/vb/t720.html

to
http://www.baitona.net/vb/t720.html

btw the above lines are examples

Hi Baitona,

You can achieve that by using the rule that comes in the vBSEO .htaccess, just replace domain.com with your domain.

Can the same thing be achieved by just parking the old domain, setting up right nameservers for it, and having this code in new domain/site's htaccess

[How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects

It would redirect all parked domains to the new domain taking care of all pages too, is that correct?

thanks

i am changing my domain name google webmaster tools says we should take care of internal links too will this take care of everything ?

edit:-

ok i placed this now all links point to new domain but strange when i come to site from google search results i still see old domain :(, i have parked old domain , is that way correct ?

my old domain and my new domain use the same ftp because my old domain is still a subdomain of my new domain
how can i modify the code so the redirect will work?
can you help me? thank you

Originally Posted by Diver

my old domain and my new domain use the same ftp because my old domain is still a subdomain of my new domain
how can i modify the code so the redirect will work?
can you help me? thank you

In your old domain root folder add these lines in htaccess file

Code:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Change the URL to your new domain

I have a 500 Internal Server Error from this redirect, how to solve it?

What's happen if you add the codes in this thread ?
[How to] Check if mod_rewrite is working for my site
Does the test page redirect you to Google ?

Weird, it still throw 500 Internal Server error...
and this is the error in my cpanel log: .htaccess: Illegal option FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine

My server has the mod_rewrite running well before this and when I move domain names and put in the setting as recommended at the top, it shows error. Any ideas about how to solve this?

That's looks like your .htaccess have a problem make sure there is space between "FollowSymLinks" and "RewriteEngine On"
Thus, the two different variables are recognized as one "FollowSymLinksRewriteEngine On".
I recommended you to edit your htaccess file via Cpanel file edit because It's a common issue with some text editors not to interpreter the blank space and new line characters

is this the same thing we use in subdomains too?
I'm trying it out and it doesn't seem to work correct
this is what I want to do

http://old.site.com
to
http://new.site.com/category/widgets/

thx

ps.. this is on a wordpress blog

Originally Posted by Brandon Sheley

is this the same thing we use in subdomains too?
I'm trying it out and it doesn't seem to work correct
this is what I want to do

http://old.site.com
to
http://new.site.com/category/widgets/

thx

ps.. this is on a wordpress blog

Yes Brandon it should work

Originally Posted by marco1

Yes Brandon it should work

Hello,
It didn't work for me.

if you went to
old.site.com/about/
it would go to
new.site.com/category/widgets/about/

I just want all visitors going to
old.site.com/{any page}
to be sent to
new.site.com/category/widget/

can this be done with an htaccess redirect or a php redirect inside a blank index.php page?

thanks