Redirecting whole site with 301 to new domain

murph · Dec 23, 2005

I have to move an entire site (2000+pages) over to a new domain as i sold the one the site is on! It was only a month old anyway, so no PR yet, but gg has indexed about 500 of the pages and y! has some too. I have read many bad things about redirecting site-wide using 301's, but it still seems the best option.

Any recommendations from experience? And any ideas on the htaccess code for a site-wide 301?

Admin · Dec 23, 2005

redirects

murph said:
And any ideas on the htaccess code for a site-wide 301?

Try this .htaccess redirect code:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?olddomain.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

murph · Dec 23, 2005

Thanks. Is the '?' supposed to be there before the domain name and after the www on line 3?

Admin · Dec 23, 2005

Not sure havent tested it, have you tried it?

murph · Dec 23, 2005

Ok cool, just tried it and it works.

htaccess code is strange at the best of times!
Admin, do you have any idea how long you leave it before pulling the plug on the old domain? I mean after it has been crawled via the 301 by gg etc...