Forum Moderators: phranque
I've read a few posts now on moving your website to a new server, new ip address, etc. What I want to do is somewhat similar, except I would like to change the directory and file structure of the site.
I build a moderately successful website about 7-8 months ago, and managing it now is getting to be a real hassle. It shouldn't be so difficult to manage, but I was still learning to play this SEO game and made some organizational mistakes. Since that time I've built a content management system with php that simplifies creating new websites & also learned how to program with CSS positioning.
Ok, so the point of this thread is I'd like to go back and rework this website now. As it stands, it's about 2500 pages, pretty much all of which are indexed by google with hundreds of top 10 rankings. The problem is these pages are all over the place and in a real mess. :(
What I would like to do is move everything over to this content system and somehow just "tell" google where the same page has been relocated to, without disrupting my SE rankings. A friend is telling me just to use 301 redirection, which I'm not entirely sure how to do...
Can someone please tell me first of all whether this is a good idea or should I just work around the current structure? If I do 301 redirects, can I do so from a central location (i.e. robots.txt) or will I have to replace each and every file with a 301 or header(location:...)? *yikes!*
Thanks,
Chris
Yes. You can do it from the .htaccess file, but it will probably be a big amount of work if there's no clear pattern in your 2,5K pages as of now.
I'm not sure about this as i've never had the need for it, but i suppose it is possible to let .htaccess redirect internally to a script that makes a lookup in a database of old+new locations and then redirects externally with the 301 header.
/claus
I guess it's about time I learned more about .htaccess and server management. There is actually some organization to the site so this might be a not too bad fit.
Chris
