Forum Moderators: open
Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!
> If a permanent 301 redirect is the answer, does that mean that I need to separately host a website for my old domain name in order to put in and enable a permanent redirect?
No, not usually. Your problem is quite easy to solve if you're hosted on an Apache server with reasonable user-privelege settings. Even if not, let us know what server you're on, and that will help get an answer.
The basic trick is to detect accesses to your current server which come in using the old domain name, and redirect those requests using a 301-Moved Permanently redirect to the same page in your new domain. SE spiders figure that out pretty quickly.
Jim
Have them create a file named .htaccess in your "home" directory - that's "dot htaccess" and the dot is required.
Have them place the following code in that file, changing only the strings "yournewdomain" to match your new domain name. Warn them not to change anything else - there are no typos in this post, and all "special" characters which appear below have meaning.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yournewdomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
HTH,
Jim
"You are free to setup your own .htaccess.
1. Create a file named 'htaccess.txt',
2. Enter your data
3. FTP it to your web host, and then rename it to .htaccess.
If you use FrontPage to publish your web page(s), custom .htaccess files cannot be used."
The point is to add the new stuff without destroying any changes made to .htaccess by FrontPage. Make backups of everything before proceeding, and test, test, test after you've made the changes.
Tell your host you need (and expect) help if that is the case.
I don't use FrontPage myself. Maybe someone will come along who can give you explicit instructions on how to deal with FrontPage without screwing it up. It can and has been done succesffuly many times. Or you can try starting a new thread, "How to modify .htaccess on a FrontPage-published site?" to rally the troops.
Jim
One of my clients changed their URL in summer 2002,
and the new URL has been indexed in Google since
last Fall.
I used the old URL as something like sitemap
with lots of text links to each content under the
new URL and it worked really well. New contents got
indexed so quickly as the old URL has always been
freshcrawled by googlebot.
But here's my problem. Google still seems to like
the old URL not the new one. The old URL get better
position in SERPs than the new URL. Although the new
URL has better PR, more inbound links, smaller file
size, and better title.
So I asked my client's server admin to set 301 redirect
from the old URL to the new site so that Google would
understand that the URL has been moved permanently.
However, the old URL is running on NetscapeEnterprise
server 4.X, and it couldn't control 301 redirect
from the server console. So what I asked them next
was as follows.
1. Please create .cgi that returns simple http header that
only returns 301 moved permanetly and execute it
when user accesses the old URL.
Their answer was "No, we can't do that for security reason"
2. Please use .htaccess.
Surprisingly, they didn't know what .htaccess was...
So I searched for NS server manual on the web and send
them links of "how to setup .htaccess" chapter.
However, their answer was that they couldn't handle
.htaccess with their NS server as the software
version was too old. (not sure if it's true)
Anyways, what I understood from their replies was that
they didn't want to do anything that bothers their
peaceful routine work.
So I looked for some other way to tell googlebot that
the site has been moved, and finally found a site that
showed me another work around. The work around is to write "301 moved permanently" in the title tag....
I doubt it, because the page with the title might
be a page that explaining what 301 redirect is.
But if any of you have tried this before, it would be
very much appreciated if you could let me know how it
worked.
Thank you very much and sorry for my post being so long.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!
Sohaio Gozaimas! (I'm sure that is not spelled correctly) ;)
Your english is excellent - better than mine! (I speak Texan)
...And certainly much better than my Japanese!
In your situation, there is not much that can be done to return a 301 response. You may wish to try using a simple meta-refresh for the short term, and consider changing hosts for the long term. I have had some luck with NTT/Verio - a subsidiary of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph. They host on Apache, and provide user access to mod_rewrite and other powerful Apache modules. Since they are owned by NTT, their services may be available to you.
There are many sites hosted on "restricted-capability" accounts, and I believe that the major search engines are aware of that problem. Some webmasters, including the owner of this forum, suggest using the meta-refresh method, so it must work - even if it does not return the "technically correct" 301-Moved Permanently response, but returns a 302 Moved Temporarily instead.
Just add the line
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1;URL=http://www.yournewdomain.com/">
It may take longer for the search engines to recognize that the site has moved, but as I said, many people have successfully used this method when moving from hosts that do not support the ability to provide a correct 301 response.
Good luck,
Jim
I will ask my client to use meta redirect instead of server side redirection. I have always been trying not to use meta redirect, but I think there's nothing we can do except that one.
The new URL is running on Apache, and my client wants the old site to shut down as soon as possible cause it costs. But I'm afraid to kill the old URL that stays #8 in very competitive keyphrase. (The new site should have listed around #5 but it stays around #13 yet)
Anyway, I thank you very much for your suggestions!
BTW, as you know, Google seems to go mad recently. When we searches for "tiger" in Chinese (Japanese)character, it returns Yahoo.com as #1 in the SERP. Maybe there's something wrong with their dictionary.... The same thing happens when searches for animal names in Japanese.
Sorry to bring up subject that is not related to this topic.
Making a backup is good advice.
- Ash
Just add the line<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1;URL=http://www.yournewdomain.com/">
To the <head> section of the pages at the old URL that you wish to redirect - the ones that have links pointing to them from other Web sites.
I think I understand this correctly. My question here is "Should the page have no content below the meta refresh tag?".
What I worry about is that it may seem like spam to Spiders if the page has lots of body content although it redirects to another page.
Thanks in advance,
ators
