Old domain, new design plus new domain

[kylesdad]

Im in the process of redesigning our site. Since we were with a small, shared host, I set up our own vps with a new domain name. Our original name was xyzcorp.com. Our new name is xyzcorporation.com.

I would like to:

1)continue to use our new domain name
2)keep our original domain name and point it to the new design/content
3)maintain our serp (low pagerank, but well placed for primary key phrase)
4)continue to use our original domain email accounts.

What is the best way to approach this? I am using WHM/CPanel if it makes a difference.

Many thanks for any input.

[bill]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld kylesdad.

You'll want to setup a 301 Permanent Redirect from all the old pages to the new pages at the new domain. You will slip in the search engines for a while, but you should come back eventually (not guaranteed).

[kylesdad]

If I setup a 301 for each page, Ill have about 50 individual redirects on my htaccess. Will that slow things down? I read somewhere about htaccess files getting too large, if I remember correctly.

[tim222]

My .htaccess is over 180 lines long and it doesn't seem to slow down the site. I'm not sure but you might be able to take care of it with a few lines, using a wildcard. This seems to work for me:

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