Do you have a existing website (www.oldsite.com) and want to move your site to your new domain (www.newsite.com)? Maybe you have two websites you want to merge into one website? If so, you will want to learn more about htaccess which makes sure any visitors to the old website domain will be redirected to your new website domain.

We recently had to do this for an interior design firm who dissolved their partnership and knew people were still being directed to portions of their old website url. Those who had known their original company name would enter it as keywords within search engines like Yahoo and Google and still see old web pages listed. It’s also quite possible that their current clients haven’t caught on to their company’s name change and are still using their bookmarked web address. Also worth mentioning are all those 3rd party sites that have links to their website. They, too, would have no way of knowing that they changed their site domain name.

Solution: URL redirects (also known as URL forwarding, domain redirection and domain forwarding) help any incoming links to the old URL be directed to the new URL.

1) Domain Forwarding: Where did you register your existing domain?

Login to the account that manages your domain. Select your old domain and find the option to Forward the domain to another domain URL. If anyone tried to visit the main index page of your old site they will automatically be redirected to your new site

2) Always Backup your .htaccess file

You don’t want to damage your website and you don’t know what default settings your web host installed on your .htaccess file. Backup, Backup, Backup!

If you use FTP software such as CuteFTP or WS FTP, your .htaccess file may be hidden. Access your .htaccess file through your Web Hosting File Manager. You should find it on your website’s main directory (usually within an htdocs, httpdocs, www or public folder).

3) Create a new .htaccess file if one does not exist

You will be creating a plain text document (For PC-users, use Notepad) and name and save it .htaccess (don’t forget the file starts with a period).

4) .htaccess and 301 Redirects

A 301 Redirect sends visitors who may visit an outdated page of your website to the new page… especially helpful for updating search engine bots.

Type the following command in your .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 oldpage.html to newpage.html

In our client’s circumstances, we used the following command line for the .htaccess file on their old website (OldWebsite.com):

Redirect 301 / http://www.NewWebiste.com/

When people try to visit OldWebsite.com/contact.html they would be redirected to NewWebsite.com/profile.html.

On the client’s new/current website (NewWebsite.com), we used the following command line for the .htaccess file so that anyone trying to find a page that no longer exists is redirected to the homepage:

ErrorDocument 404 /home.html

** Make sure to upload your .htaccess files as an Ascii file. Remember, if you upload it using FTP software, the .htaccess file might disappear from view but exists (just hidden).