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    4. How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?

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    How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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    • smpomoryCRH
      smpomoryCRH last edited by

      There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake").

      About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain?

      Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • brettmandoes
        brettmandoes last edited by

        Sorry Sean, I misunderstood your question. No, you cannot redirect any website you don't have access to. My recommendation would be to contact the host and work with them to obtain access. It's usually not a complex process.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • smpomoryCRH
          smpomoryCRH @brettmandoes last edited by

          Hi Brett,

          I've tried the above and previously found the InMotion Hosting resource. I'm able to redirect pages on chesapeakeregional.com just fine. I believe I cannot do the above in the ches reg .htacess because the site I want to redirect from is a different domain. If I could, there wouldn't be anything to stop anyone from redirecting, say facebook.com, to their own website...unless I'm misunderstanding something.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • brettmandoes
            brettmandoes last edited by

            There are several resources around the net that show how to do this. Here's a code snippet provided by http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/redirects/setting-up-a-301-permanent-redirect-via-htaccess

            RewriteEngine on
            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC,OR]
            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com [NC]
            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.net/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

            If this doesn't work for you, here are some other resources:
            https://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/301-redirects/
            https://css-tricks.com/snippets/htaccess/301-redirects/
            http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/how-to-properly-implement-a-301-redirect/

            The first code example is more canonical friendly. The simple version I see used a lot and recommended in the other resources I've provided looks like this:

            RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.xyz.com
            
            
            smpomoryCRH 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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