Changing domain names

[helleborine]

My first website has now become hugely popular. BEyond my wildest dreams.

Because I didn't think it was worth it at the time, I kept the mydomain.freehost.com name.

I've finally achieved decent linking schemes and rankings.

Is there anything I could do the change the domain name, without begging everyone for link updates, and losing my SE ranking?

[maximillianos]

You may be able to contact your free hosting provider about the possibility of setting up a permanent 301 redirect. This allows requests to get forwarded to your new domain, and it alerts search bots that your URL has changed (well at least some follow this protocol).

For more info, search this site (or google) for "301 redirect".

Hope this helps!

[helleborine]

Could I do that in .htaccess?

[maximillianos]

Yes, you can do it that way.

[snsh]

Be careful with 301 redirects! my site has been absent from Google's index for 4 months now, because of a 301 redirect from old to a new domain name, while google is slow to index the new domain name, for who-knows-what reason.

Suggest the following process:
1) Register new domain name
2) Copy content from old to new domain
3) Do meta redirects for each page in old domain to each page in new domain
4) After new domain is well indexed, do 301 redirect

If #3 is not feasible (active content site?), then
1) Register new domain
2) Put signpost webpage on new domain
4) After signpost webpage is indexed, do 301 redirect