Blogging, Strategy
14

Changing Your Blog Name and The Power of the 301 Redirect

Posted by John Saddington on Jun 16, 2009

name

Sometimes you just want to change your blog name. I know. I’ve had that thought a thousand+1 times. And sometimes it’s legitimate.

But what do you do so that you don’t lose all that good traffic love and link juice?

301 Redirect with .htaccess baby!

Here’s how you do it:

  • Create a new file with a basic text editor and call it htaccess.txt
  • Add the following two lines in the file:
  • RewriteEngine On
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yournewdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
  • Replace “yournewdomain.com” with your actual new domain name.
  • Upload it to your root folder on your server.
  • Change the name from “htaccess.txt” to “.htaccess”

Voila. Try the old domain and it should kick over directly to your new domain name, with links in place. Of course, make sure you backup everything before you do anything you’d regret!

Have any other questions? Jump over to the Forums.

  • Buzz it!
  • Bookmark and Share

John Saddington

John is the Chief Editor @ The 8BIT Network and Senior Blog Junkie here at ChurchCrunch.He enjoys Triple-Tall Americanos, developing Wordpress Themes, and a few other Random Things.

Leave a Reply

14 Responses to “Changing Your Blog Name and The Power of the 301 Redirect”

  1. Dave Sandell
    Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 6:47 pm

    If you want to change your blog name so that it doesn't have a 'www' in front of it, is this also necessary? (say, http://www.churchcrunch.com to churchcrunch.com)

    Reply
  2. Eric Jones
    Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    i think it's important to point out that this will only work if you are using some sort of URL rewriter like Apache Mod_ReWrite or ISAPIReWrite for IIS. Just putting the file in your web root SHOULD work on MOST hosts out there but a good webmaster would double check :-)

    Reply
  3. Dustin
    Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 12:16 am

    You can also do it right from your wordpress backend-dealy-bob. From your dashboard, click on "settings", make sure you're in "general settings" and then change the wordpress address url to your domain name, minus the "www".

    Reply
  4. Jim
    Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:37 pm

    i was just pondering shortening up http://eternaltruthworldwide.com …what do you think? too long?

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:43 pm

      pretty long, but not hard.

      Reply
      • Jim
        Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:45 pm

        have you seen the new design?

        Reply
        • human3rror
          Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:47 pm

          i have. it's cool. i'm going to release some themes soon… too bad!

          ;)

          Reply
          • Jim
            Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 6:48 pm

            i should of asked…but will need some for 2 other projects…hit me

            Reply
  5. Cillaspinlene
    Sunday, January 10, 2010 at 10:25 am

    Хороший сайт. Так держать!!!

    Reply

  1. How to Change Your Blog Name | BeaconHill NW

    [...] more information on this and more stuff on the interwebs checkout ChurchCrunch.com “Exploring the Intersection of Technology and the [...]