redirecting from multiple sites to one site

a common topic... - merging sites and not losing visitors

[tomsk]

Currently we have 4 different websites, each separately hosted, 4 separate domain names.

We want to merge them, but not to lose visitors, so some kind of redirect is needed.

From scanning the posts here, am I right in thinking that I need to get the hosts to put a 301 permanent redirect for each of the domain names, pointing to the domain name of the merged site?

Is it possible to specify a particular page for the visitors to be redirected to? ie www.newsite.com/explanationofredirection.html

thank you!

[Brett_Tabke]

Welcome to the board. You are on the right track. If you are using apache, an .htaccess file at the old location is all that is needed.

Redirect 301 /home/oldsite http://www.newdomain.com/explain.htm

Note, that the first is the absolute path on the server, while the second is the redirect destination URL.

[tomsk]

Thank you for such a speedy reply!

What if the host isn't using Apache?...

[Brett_Tabke]

Sorry - I don't know other servers. I imagine there must be something similar built in. If not, you'll have to script something.

[tomsk]

you'll have to script something.

Gulp. Thanks!