Changing my domain

[wanadrive]

Not sure which forum this should be in - so gone for general.

I've been swapping over to a new domain name to something a little bit more catchy. The new domain does not yet have hosting. I've been re-directing to the old name. I now have some links to the new name and some to the old name. I realise this may not be great for my search engine positioning. So to tidy things up I intend getting the new name properly hosted and putting the site on there and trying to get people to change their links to the new domain.

What should I do about the old domain - I still have 9 months to run on the name and the hosting package. (I cannot have the new name on the old package). Should I keep the site live on boths domains ( I read that Google can penalise you for this) or should I just get it automatically redirected or should I have a page on the old domain telling people to click for the new domain?

Are there any other problems I haven't thought of yet?

[Corey Bryant]

See if your hosting company will let you change from the old one to the new one. And then do a 301 redirect from the old one to the new one

-Corey

[wanadrive]

No they won't let me change. It's a cheap deal and presumably to keep costs down they don't allow it.