Forum Moderators: phranque
I have a client with 2 sites, both with unique content. The decision was initially made to create 2 different sites rather than one because they really go after two different markets. They are now expanding into a third market and have plans for even more. Creating more sites no longer makes sense. So now I want to move the 2 existing sites under a new umbrella domain and create the pages for this third market under the new domain. Each market will be a mini-site (in the good sense ;-) under the new umbrella, with a similar layout but its own look and links to the other markets.
So we currently have:
www.market1.com
www.market2.com
I will create
www.umbrella.com
and move the 2 existing sites to the new domain (without change DNS for new domain):
www.umbrella.com/market1
www.umbrella.com/market2
and create the third as
www.umbrella.com/market3
Once everything is working on the new umbrella domain, I will change the DNS for this domain and edit the htaccess files on the two existing domains (market1.com, market2.com) for a 301 redirect to the proper page on the new domain.
Ie, on market1.com
redirectpermanent /page1.htm [umbrella.com...]
redirectpermanent /page2.htm [umbrella.com...]
etc.
and on market2.com
redirectpermanent /page1.htm [umbrella.com...]
redirectpermanent /page2.htm [umbrella.com...]
etc.
Does this sound like a winner? Comments/suggestions appreciated.
>> and move the 2 existing sites to the new domain (without change DNS for new domain):
I don't know exactly what you mean by the DNS thing (a few different options are available), but you should try to make sure that the same content is not available on the web at two different sites at the same time, eg. don't link to the new sites before you've got the 301's in place.
Related thread: Moving websites to a new central domain [webmasterworld.com]
/claus
I read the other thread and that was quite helpful.
Now I'm a little concerned about duplication. There is no duplicate material on the 2 sites now and there won't be any on the third site we are adding.
However, I will need to wait (I assume) for the changes to the dns for the umbrella domain to propagate before I can put the redirects in place on the existing sites. I don't want to redirect to the default welcome page for my parked domain. So there could be a short period of overlap, ie www.umbrella.com/market1 would contain the same pages as existing site www.market1.com.
Am I thinking correctly? How can I avoid this overlap?
I suppose I could initially get the new market3 pages on the umbrella domain as these pages do not currently exist. Once the umbrella domain is being spidered, I could move the other sites over and put the 301s in place.
Does that sound better?
There will always be a short period with overlap when making changes like these. There's nothing to do about that, except to try to keep the new location as a secret untill it's ready to go live (mainly by not linking to it). AFAIK, googlebot will discover your new pages if it finds a link to them somewhere, and if you dont link to them you should be okay, as then the new content won't be found untill you put the 301's up.
Further, if there is no link from the front page of your new domain to the folders holding the old sites, then you will be able to test them and get links to your front page as well - you could even put passwords on these two folders during the development time. As long as the duplicate pages can't be found, it's no problem that they are there.
Your idea about setting up the market3 pages first sounds good, although it's a bit more risky, as then you will have googlebot crawling your new domain before you make the changes. I would prefer moving the old sites first, then setting up the 301, and then putting up the market3 pages. (the new domain will be spidered as soon as you make the 301)
/claus
Thanks again.
