Change of domain name

I know it’s not strictly got anything to do with the theme, but I’m really struggling with this related site issue…

Consulted some “experts” and the way they communicate seems as though they have as much idea as me…

I have a domain/hosting situated at one provider, which as been online and live for a year.

My new domain which I want to replace the old one with is at another registrar.

I want to do a 301 redirect, so that my new domain name appears in the url of the old. However when I did the “change of address” feature in google web master tools didn’t work, I was told it’s because the files need to be migrated.

Does anyone know the most efficient solution?

You can use DUPLICATOR plugin for WordPress to move site and content from one domain to another domain. This will also fix internal links to use new domain name for all internal links, images in posts, etc.

Then you setup a 301 redirect on the old domain to point everything at new domain; this is normally done via the .htaccess file … as so:

<IFModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} oldwebsitenamehere\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://NEWSITE.com/$1 [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

I just did this couple of weeks ago with my 9-year old music magazine which had horribly long name, now nice shiny short one after 9 years.

Google actually has a pretty good guide on the basics of this process.

1) migrate all content to new domain name; make sure it all works; meaning images, etc.
2) add 301 redirect on old domain name to htaccess file — so anything you type for old site redirects to new site
3) add new site to Google Webmaster tools and CONFIRM/validate ownership
4) once 301 redirects work, then you can do “change site” in Webmaster tools from old to new
(NOTE: this does not work with https websites which is a whole other pain in the butt)

Hope that helps.

🙂

Hi thank you very much for your help,

it has all worked up until I go to webmaster tools and try a “change of adress” I just get the error on the “confirm that 301-redirects work properly” which says:

“URLs from your old site should be redirected to your new site using permanent 301-redirect directives.
We couldn’t find any 301-redirect directives for your site. For more details check the Fetch as Google tool.”

I’m left confused as the 301-redirect appears to be active?

Hi,

Still found no solution sadly, had many people attempt to help me now and paid some to have a look with no solution either.

Double checked that the redirect’s are correct, that the preferences etc are all checked, yet still getting the “We couldn’t crawl your site. Check that Googlebot can crawl the root of your site using the Fetch as Google tool”

Right, well
your NEW domain has to work …
such as going to “mynewsite.com/story-1-2-3/”

the redirect put in place on OLD domain should be work like so

myoldsite.com/story-1-2-3 >>> mynewsite.com/story-1-2-3

What does the 301 redirect look like in your old site’s htaccess file?

There should be nothing else in that file except the redirect.

I think you are referring to the wordpress permalink structure? I selected the “post name” option and that seems to be working well as far as I can see.

The redirect in the old domain is as follows (and contains only this within an .htaccess):

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^www.moneysavingbible.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.moneymod.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

# END WordPress

I then go to webmaster tools, and if I select http://www.moneysavingbible.com, I get the following error at step 2 called “Confirm that 301-redirects work properly
URLs from your old site should be redirected to your new site using permanent 301-redirect directives”:

“The old site redirects to moneysavingbible.com, which does not correspond to the new site you chose.”

Where if I choose moneysavingbible.com (without www.) I get the following error message:

“We couldn’t crawl your site. Check that Googlebot can crawl the root of your site using the Fetch as Google tool.”

If you are redirecting from old site youre no longer using wordpress on old site, so there should not be any wordpress stuff still installed on old site.

Server should be doing redirect, not wordpress.

If using apache, try my code as it works.

Also note you should only be using one canonical format for new site..

Domain.com
Or
http://Www.domain.com

Not both. Both should work if typed in, but only one should resolve. So do your psges resolve to www version, or non www version… This also needs to match what you setup for new site in webmaster tools.

Redirect does seem to work, and site does resolve to www. Hmmmmm….

Try my version as that is based on all the guides for doing this for wordpress on apache servers. And it worked for me.

Make sure your new site is setup and validated with www in webmaster tools.

Thanks, it’s finally worked, not after talking to my host providers, not google help forums or the wordpress forum but you, so thank you very much I appreciate it.

Aw, shucks ….
you’re lucky I just went through doing this exact same thing for one of my websites this month, so I already had it done 🙂

Glad I could help!!

(my karma points bucket is now full for this month!) 😉

haha well I’m glad you were happy to oblige. Just wondering if I need to maintain the hosting for the old domain? And can I let the domain expire?