[Pro] Web pages redirect

Hi all

I have redesigned my website and the structure and page names are new. It is not uploaded yet.
I get lots of pages successfully coming up in Google when I search and obviously don’t want to loose that. I have read a lot about 301 redirects etc to get my old pages redirected to my new. A few questions.

  1. The main website address will be staying the same - does this mean that my new home page (index) will automatically replace the old homepage when coming up in general searches?
  2. Has anyone successfully directed old pages to the new corresponding pages and could they explain it in idiot/dummy terms? (I don’t understand how everything works at the server end. I am with 1and1 and when I view my site folders I can see lots of folders and botched subdomain efforts)
  3. Is there anyway to test my new site on a subdomain without interfering with my current site?

I realise that there are a lot of issues here but thanks in advance for any help.

Adam


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  1. The main website address will be staying the same - does this mean that my new home page (index) will automatically replace the old homepage when coming up in general searches?

If you keep exactly the same page names and site structure you are guaranteed to retain your Google MoJo.

Change the page names and the structure and you will have to ensure that your 301 redirect includes links from all the old pages to the equivalent new ones.

when I view my site folders I can see lots of folders and botched subdomain efforts)

If you dont need it then bin it - it will dilute your SEO juice

Is there anyway to test my new site on a subdomain without interfering with my current site?

Absolutely. Simply create a subdomain with your FTP app (or just a folder - ‘newsite’) and in the redesigned site set the upload path to include the new folder you created ie upload path www.mysite.com/newsite/

The first upload you will do from the new FW doc will populate the newsite folder and once you are happy you can delete the /newsite/ part from the upload path.

David


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As far as creating the redirect goes - do you have an existing .htaccess page?

If so then you need to open it with a text editor and add the following lines

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html
Redirect 301 /oldpage2.html http://www.yoursite.com/folder/newpage2.html

Obviously as appropriate for your page name and folder structure.

This assumes that your site is on an Apache server.

If you do not have an .htaccess page then you will need to create one using a plain text editor like TextWrangler (Free)

Add he suitably adjusted lines above (one for each redirected page) to a new text document and call it htaccess

Save the file and upload it to the root of your site ie the public_html folder or www or whatever your hosting provider calls it.

Once it is up there change the name of the file to .htaccess - if you do it before you upload then it will disappear on your Mac as these are classed as system files and hidden from view. Your FTP app should have a setting to ‘Show invisible files’ - Transmit certainly does. You will need to enable this to check if you have an .htaccess file already.

Now it is up there visit one of the old pages mysite.com/oldpage.html and see if you are redirected to the new page mysite.com/newpage.html. If you are not and you get a Server 500 error then either you didn’t do it right or your host doesn’t allow it.

If it doesn’t work check the paths and/or delete the .htaccess and contact your host.

David


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