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How to move your WordPress blog and keep the traffic flowing
By Jamie | October 7, 2007
I finally got around to moving the blog to a different location on our website. This has been something I have been meaning to do for a while now, but was put off at the thought of loosing my web traffic. But fear not, using Redirection plugin you can keep the traffic flowing.
I’m not moving my blog
Before you skip over this post, because you’re not moving your blog, think again. The Redirection plugin has a very nice feature that allows you to redirect 404 pages, which is just a technical name for missing pages caused by broken links. The plugin logs any occurrences of 404 pages along the URL address of the page requested. To stop this happening again, you simple provide the 404 record with alternative location.
For example I noticed that the following page had been requested a number times.
/Getting the whole picture, WordPress and Feedburner
Up until this morning this would of resulted in 404 page being displayed. Now it redirects to the correct page.
I am moving my blog
For a while now I’ve been wanting to move the blog from http://www.terinea.co.uk/blogs/terineatechtips (we use to have two blogs, other one was called TerineaTimes) to http://www.terinea.co.uk/blog for a number of reasons. I also wanted to change the permlink setup too. But before you install the plugin, make sure you have a complete copy of your blog in the new location. Once you’re happy, download Redirection plugin, install and watch the video on how to use the plugin.
Here is what I implemented:-
I wanted any of my original posts, for example…
/blogs/terineatectips/2007/10/23/this-is-a-blog-post.php
to redirect to
/blog/this-is-a-blog-post.php
Rather that add 200 redirects, I used the following syntax
/blogs/terineatechtips/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/
to redirect to
/blog/$4/
$4 value is in reference to the “(.*)” variable from the original URL address. If I wanted to use the other variables it would look something like this…
/blog/$1/$2/$3/$4/
$1 = Year $2 = Month $3 = date $4 = Post name
I hope that’s clear as mud?
301 and Duplicated Content
Any readers on David Airey’s fantastic blog will know, that Google doesn’t like duplicated content. So not only does the Redirection plugin redirect traffic to the new blog posts, but it also tells Google and other Search Engines that the page has permanently moved to a new location, using a 301 code. Hopefully after a while they will re-index these pages.
301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It’s not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option. The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”.
Don’t forget the others
- You must also remember to update your Feedburner feed and integrate it into your blog template.
- Re-add your Google Analytics code into your WordPress template
- Unfortunately one thing you can’t change is the URL of your Technorati account, so hence I’ve had to create a new blog, which is now sat at 3 rather than my pervious 176!
Topics: Tech Overload, Web development & eCommerce, blogging |
Article Tags>> blogs | plugins | wordpress
October 8th, 2007 at 12:20 am
[…] A View from Home wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt readers on David Aireys fantastic blog will know, that Google doesnt like duplicated content. So not only does the Redirection plugin redirect traffic to the new blog posts, but it also tells Google… Feedburner feed and integrate it into your blog template. Re-add your Google Analytics code into your […]
October 8th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I wasn’t so familiar with the redirection plugin, so thanks for the write-up, Jamie, and good work on your relocation.
October 9th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
It is also good plugin if you ever want to re-write an article and have any traffic from the old one redirect to the new one.
Jamie