htaccess redirect from old subdirectory site to new subdomain site

[Millie63]

hi again lhungil

Thanks for replying in so much detail. Greatly appreciated. I'm still trying to digest it all (while trying to pretend I know what I'm doing - what a joke! if pigs could fly etc etc.)

I think I need to explain the structure of what's on my cpanel. Basically it's got 3 different websites on it - they don't have anything to do with each other. Two are different small business websites and one is an art showcase.

The primary domain (ecl.com) is a small business website - mainly a static website with 5 info pages, another 4 pages with quizzes and a contact form. The plan is to change this over to a wordpress site eventually.

The art showcase is an addon domain in folder /artwebsite.com in /public_html

The website with the zencart is another addon domain (/mydomain.com in /public_html). This is the biggest website of the 3.
The old (and still active) site format is
www.mydomain.com/what-are-now-ezpages.shtml (about 15 pages of these)
and
www.mydomain.com/zencart
The test website is the folder /shop in public_html and it is installed as a subdomain (shop.mydomain.com).
If I understood correctly I do not need to do any redirection when I finally move shop.mydomain.com to mydomain.com (except for the following:-
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?zencart/
RewriteRule ^(/?)zencart/(.*)$ $1$2
which should come before the CEON uri mapping code in .htaccess in mydomain.com

I was told by my hosting company that I can have different websites on same cpanel. When I did site:domain.com searches for all three, only pages from one domain show up and there's no crossing over. In awstats however, both addon domains show as subdomains of the primary domain - but I guess this doesn't matter much as only I see the awstats. I hope having 3 sites on same cpanel is not effecting SEO for the addon domains - or the primary domain for that matter. Any thoughts on this? I read somewhere that I should probably have [R301] redirects for both the addon domains to redirect subdomain.primarydomain.com to domain.com (i.e artwebsite.ecl.com to artwebsite.com) for SEO reasons. What's your take on this?

Oh and I've installed the EZpages meta tag fields plugin on the test site. Thank you :)

Now I need a break coz I'm seeing double About to make that half full /empty glass into 1/4 : 3/4
Cheers!

[lhungil]

... In awstats however, both addon domains show as subdomains of the primary domain - but I guess this doesn't matter much as only I see the awstats. ... I read somewhere that I should probably have [R301] redirects for both the addon domains to redirect subdomain.primarydomain.com to domain.com (i.e artwebsite.ecl.com to artwebsite.com) for SEO reasons. What's your take on this?
...

Unless another.domain.tld is linked to, most SEs will never see another.domain.tld (only the add-on domain's name). But to be on the safe side one could redirect all requests to a specific FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name). Keep in mind Zen Cart will only generate links using the defined values of HTTP_SERVER and HTTPS_SERVER (which should contain the desired FQDNs).

###############################################################################
# Enable mod_rewrite processing using the rules in this .htaccess file
###############################################################################
# Notes: 
#
# For mod_rewrite to work, the Apache server option to allow symbolic links to
# be followed must be enabled. Most providers supporting mod_rewrite will
# already have it enabled for you, but if your rewrite rules are not working
# you can un-comment the first directive below to manually enable the option.
#
# Don't forget, mod_rewrite directives are processed in order until a matching
# RewriteRule with the [L] flag is encountered. So the more specific a rule is
# the closer it should appear to the top of this file.
#
# These directives should only appear once in the .htaccess file
###############################################################################
#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

###############################################################################
# Redirect to the desired FQDN if the request was not for the desired FQDN
###############################################################################
# Notes: 
#
# This utilizes a HTTP/301 response. Any POST data will be discarded. 
###############################################################################
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !host\.domain\.tld$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://host.domain.tld%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,QSA,L]

###############################################################################
# Remove "zencart" if present from the request URI
###############################################################################
# Notes:
#
# Some servers add a leading slash "/" and others do not. This rule attempts
# to handle both, but one may need to alter this by hand on some servers.
###############################################################################
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?zencart/
RewriteRule ^(/?)zencart/(.*)$ $1$2

###############################################################################
# CEON URI Mapping
###############################################################################