6 replies to this topic

[bobmeetin]

Background: Business has changed hands several times and along with that, many chefs confusing the charge.

Original domain name A has been a live site for 5 or so years. Site was optimized for several key phrases. Business was sold, then sold again. Owner #3 takes control. Client convinces owner #3 to trade services, a new website, domain name B in exchange for services. Client disappears, so now business owner has 2 websites, neither being managed.

I suggest to client there is no point to managing 2 sites. Hey, if you're not updating one site now, why two! So anyway, client is adamant that he likes the name for #2 vs #1, or something there of..., so wants to dump #1.

I will end up doing as he wished, and copy any relevant content over from A to B, then apply redirection. Any feedback?

Would you redirect page to page used 301's or site to site?

[Michael Martinez]

If the URLs for all the pages will remain the same, only a single site-to-site redirect is required. Otherwise you'll need to implement page-by-page redirection (deepest page first, root URL last).

[qwerty]

Otherwise you'll need to implement page-by-page redirection (deepest page first, root URL last).

That's a new one for me. Do you mean list the redirects in the .htaccess in that order? I'm guessing the intent here is to get the deeper pages indexed relatively quickly since they're less likely to be requested when the site is crawled, but even if that's right, I don't understand how it would work.

[bobmeetin]

I'm exceptionally good at miscommunication.

Site A has perhaps 10 pages, static html. There is no point in maintaining two active sites, so the plan would be to can all files/content on site A and redirect the entire glob to site B. I could do that at the domain registrar with the nameservers, then I believe on the hosting service I will need to create an account that lives as site B.

With the files that existed on A but not on B should I just create those files on B and hopefully the redirection will keep for losing any optimization that A had earned, or does that completely go by the wayside?

How would you do it?

[Michael Martinez]

That's a new one for me. Do you mean list the redirects in the .htaccess in that order? I'm guessing the intent here is to get the deeper pages indexed relatively quickly since they're less likely to be requested when the site is crawled, but even if that's right, I don't understand how it would work.

If you have a Website with these pages:

one.example.com
one.example.com/page-a
one.example.com/page-b
one.example.com/page-c

And you want to redirect them to:

two.example.com
two.example.com/page-a
two.example.com/page-b
two.example.com/page-c

Then all you need to do is redirect one.example.com to two.example.com.

However, if you want to redirect them to:

three.example.com
three.example.com/page-one
three.example.com/page-two
three.example.com/page-three

Then you MUST do your redirects in this order (where only the last line is significant):

one.example.com/page-a to three.example.com/page-one
one.example.com/page-b to three.example.com/page-two
one.example.com/page-c to three.example.com/page-three
one.example.com to three.example.com

WHY does the root URL have to come last? Because from that point forward, every URL that has not been redirected already will be redirected to its counterpart (with the exact same directory/page-URL) on the new domain. If there are NO such counterparts on the new domain to redirect anything to, you don't want anything to redirect after the root URL.

Maybe someone knows a more efficient way to do this but in experimenting with various formats and orders, I found that I created many 404 results until I learned to do it this way.

[Michael Martinez]

I'm exceptionally good at miscommunication.

Site A has perhaps 10 pages, static html. There is no point in maintaining two active sites, so the plan would be to can all files/content on site A and redirect the entire glob to site B. I could do that at the domain registrar with the nameservers, then I believe on the hosting service I will need to create an account that lives as site B.

With the files that existed on A but not on B should I just create those files on B and hopefully the redirection will keep for losing any optimization that A had earned, or does that completely go by the wayside?

How would you do it?

Simply redirecting the old domain to the new domain without accounting for differences in page names and directory paths will potentially create Error 404 situations (depending on how people get to the deep content on the old site).

However, if you don't have any corresponding content on the new domain for the pages on the old domain, I think this will work:

one.example.com/* to three.example.com

But you would have to test that to be sure. You MUST include some sort of code that refers to the old page URLs. (In my LIMITED experience) Simply redirecting the domain name doesn't do anything for the page names -- the redirection process will just assume the pages have been moved to the new domain with the same paths.

[bobmeetin]

There were more pages on the old than new site and the filenames are different, so I will set up old page to new page redirection and probably add the missing pages to the new site and custom redirect them as well. Thanks, Michael, you confirmed the action plan.