WordPress.org

1. scribb
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   I've had a blog running for three years, so I've got a big archive, and most of my traffic comes from search. But it's time to reposition, and I need to change the name of my blog, and domain.

   I'm trying to figure out: Can I point my old domain to a directory off the root where the old blog/archive would live, and build my new blog on the root? I'm hoping to be able to put both blogs into the same template, and then hack the "home" link on the legacy blog to point to the new blog.

   Is this a workable strategy? Is there a better strategy?

   Thanks.

2. JLeuze
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Are you trying to rebrand your current blog? Or create a new one?

   If you're creating a new one, maybe just keep the old one separate, and link them together.

   Or if you are rebranding it, why not keep your old content, and just change the name and domain? Keep the old name of course, and use it as an alias for your new domain, or redirect to your new domain. How you do this will depend on your host I guess.

   But if you can at all possible keep it together in one install of WordPress, even if you separate the new and old stuff by categories or whatever, it will be way less headaches for keeping WordPress and your plugins upto date. And it will probably be less database headaches too.

3. scribb
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Thanks jleuze.

   I'm trying to rebrand my current blog, while minimizing the SEO damage. If I just redirect the domain, I'll kill my SEO ranking. I'll also lose ranking if I make them totally separate blogs, as the legacy blog will no longer have fresh content. I don't think there's any way to totally avoid taking a hit, I'm just trying to figure out a strategy to minimize it.

   1) I need to make sure my old legacy links still resolve to the archive pages.
   2) I'd like to keep it in one install of WordPress, for the reasons you state.

4. JLeuze
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Yeah, that is tricky scribb. Especially when it can be hard to tell what is and isn't working well with the search engines!

   There are lots of different ways to redirect pages or a whole site though. Many of them are crude, but I have had good luck with doing the redirecting with the .htaccess or httpd.conf files.

   I have used the Rewrite method myself to replace just the domain name, leaving path and/or file name intact so you do not get broken links.

   From what I understand, a 301 redirect will pass the Google "juice" through to the new page or domain.

   Used in conjunction with the Sitemaps plugin, and things like Google's Webmaster Tools, it shouldn't be too hard to make sure that the spiders don't get lost :)

5. Otto
   Tech Ninja
   Posted 3 years ago #

   WordPress does canonical redirection. If you simply point the new domain at the same site, and then adjust the URLs in the Settings screen accordingly, then WordPress will 301 redirect all your links to the new correct ones.

   In other words, if I have example1.com and example2.com both pointing at the same website, then only one of them will be canonical. That would be the one in my settings. If I go to the other one, it'll resolve what page I'm going to, then notice that my URL was incorrect, and 301 me to the other URL.

   This is most often noticed when somebody uses a www when you don't want it there or vice-versa. WordPress forces a visitor to a page to be at what WordPress thinks is the correct URL.

   More info:
   http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/wordpress-23-canonical-urls/

6. JLeuze
   Member
   Posted 3 years ago #

   Yeah, Otto's suggestion would probably be the simplest way to do this.

   I wasn't aware that this worked across multiple domains. I thought that this was more for, as Otto mentioned, redirecting from a www or making pretty and not-so-pretty permalinks both work.

   If you can solve your problem right in WordPress, why not!

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