Switching to new domain name...

Hi All,
So soon I will be switching to a new domain name. the reason is for expansion as currently my site is a local site, it is for the city I live in. There are two major cities in the province I live in, I now have both the domain names of my niche for both cities as well as for the province... example coolcityhockey.com and hotcityhockey.com and provincehockey.com (not actual domain names of mine, did not check if they exist just examples.) How should I go about converting my entire site to the "province" site without losing my google searches? Should I just say screw it and let google re index the entire site under the new domain or should I create directional sites that auto redirect or tell the user to go to this site or "click to enter". Or is there a way with the htaccess that I could re-direct it all while maintaining the links? Example when you goto a specific thread it now redirects to the new site...

I'll be upgrading from vb3.8 to vb4 at the same time...

btw, this is just for one instance of vB. 1 site (example coolcityhockey) was my main site and i just recently took over the rival cities domain name. So there is no merging of databases or anything, just a simple domain name switch...

Park the old domain on the new domain, and make sure you have 301 for non-www to www set up properly (included but commented out in default htaccess), as this will also catch the old domain and redirect to the new domain with www's. (or vice versa if you don't use www's)

Thanks Brian, do you happen to have an example? Also... doesn't vB4 change the URL format? Would vBSEO 3.5 change it back to the format I currently have it on? As that site is very well indexed in Google and has made my site #1 in all my targeted key words (why I love vBSEO)

Code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

it's default in vbseo htaccess.


with vbseo, you won't lose any urls provided you install in the same location and vb3.

So should I install vBSEO 3.5 first then upgrade to vB4, then copy the site to the new domain then use a redirect from the old domain to the new domain?

As for the htaccess, am I just "deleting" everything in my old domains directory and leaving only the htaccess file there that would rewrite everything? Or maybe I'm a bit confused...

Disable all plugins including vbseo on vb3.
Upgrade to vb4.
install vbseo 3.5


for the domain, set up a new account for the new domain, move the files, etc.
delete the old domain web account.
park the old domain on the new domain.

Forgive me, I don't think I understand "park the old domain on the new domain". I have an idea of what you're speaking of but am a bit unsure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60TOI5Duo-w


You may need to consult your host for more info. In cpanel Whm, there's a menu option to do so.

Thanks Brian, I'm using Plesk. My suspicions were right of what you were saying after watching the video.