I really am confused as to the steps I'll need to take to do this.
The domain name is registered with my web host. My new domain name is registered elsewhere.
I know I have links in my site hardcoded as www.currentdomain.com/...
Do I just tell my web host that I have a new domain and i want to replace my old one with it? Should I transfer it to them? Will they then make www.currentdomain.com to redirect to www.newdomain.com? When something like www.currentdomain.com/directory/sample.htm is then requested will it redirect to www.newdomain.com/directory/sample.htm (the full URL)?
I know these are a lot of stupid questions, but I'm really concerned and have never done this before.
I have a busy web site and I want to change the domain name. With tens of thousands of visitors a day
You have a successful site; why on earth would you want to change the domain name?
dns works like a phone book. every machine on the internet has a "telephone number". when you type in a domain name in your address bar in your browser, it goes to something called a root server to figure out which "phone book" to use, then it goes to that phone book and asks for the "phone number" of the machine that serves the web pages to visitors. This machine will look at the request (the domain name you typed in your browser) and figure out what to "tell" the visitor. The actual "phone book" is likely managed by your hosting company, but you have complete discretion over this. Hosting the web site is independent of the dns/phone book information. You can point your domains to any machine address/"phone number" you like, however that particular machine must be able to properly understand and identify the request it is presented to deliver the desired content (your web site).
1) do a whois search for your current domain and make a note of the nameservers. you can use [nsiregistry.com...] to perform this task. (not advertising)
hint: Look for "Name Server:"
2) go to the web site that you used to register the other domain, log in and update the nameserver information so that it is the same as your existing site. this update will take at least 24 hours to propogate. back in the old days i would bet on at least a week, however now-a-days it goes pretty quick. it depends on two things: a) that the dns servers in the world that supply the bulk of directory information to clients follow the rules and b) your current dns entry tells these servers not to cache the results for very long.
3) see who is managing the nameserver for the existing domain. you can try using the link above to tackle this task
4) call and/or send that person an email telling them to set up dns for the new domain to match the old domain. normally they will like to receive all the details - ip address info, mx record etc however perhaps they will be friendly if you explain that you are new to this whole thing. if you give them the existing domain name they can figure out everything they need to set up dns for the new domain. if they are unfriendly they may request the info, post a note here and i can give some help.
5) tell your hosting company to set up an alias to your existing domain name on their server. the server will look at the host header information and decide what content to serve.
6) tell your hosting company to set up their mail server to service your new domain.
7) find a program to locate all the absolute references to your old domain in your html, etc files and replace them. a good html text editor should do this, try quanta gold. otherwise you could do it from the command line using grep if you understand this sort of thing. what you want to accomplish is removing all the absolute links and make them relative links.
i suggest you try out a few pages and make sure you get it right before changing your entire site.
wait something like at least two weeks if you can, and disable the other site if that is your perogative.
make sure to inform your visitors that the domain is changing, everywhere possible on the site. people like to bookmark pages that they find attractive, and if they do not understand what you are doing with your domain names they may not be able to locate your site in the future. if you have a subscriber database, send them an email letting them know about your plans.
if you can wait longer, keep both sites up for a couple of weeks then maybe change the content of the old site so that every page pulls up an explanation and a nice link to the requested page on the new site.
the "more and better" you communicate your intended plans to your visitors the better off you will be.
best regards,
I'm new to this site and it's very helpful!
They said to go into my new domain and change the name servers to point to the same ones that my current domain uses. Then, I am supposed to contact them and tell them to, on their server, point the new domain to the my site.
At this point, both old and new domain will bring up my site, and I guess the URL in the address window will show whichever domain they used to get there. (I wonder which domain Google will use for it's indexing?)
This seems okay for a day or two, but then I need to make it so that whenever the old_domain/..... is used it will bring and and show new_domain/...... He was a bit confused on this. He thought there was a way to do this on his end, but don't I just have to then go into my old domain and remove the name server info and instead do a Redirect to the new domain?
On September 18, this thread was started: Site change of URL [webmasterworld.com]
I'm not going to double post, but there's a few valuable tips in that thread that you might want to read in addition to what is already posted here.
Try doing a site search for mod_rewrite.
There's far less of a problem with a 301 than the others. Google has zero problem with it, others aren't quite as good, especially Inktomi. But you don't want the others, that's asking for problems.
