Moving Site to new domain, a few questions

I have performed a full backup of my site, and also backed up its database as per Dr. Bytes instructions in another thread on this topic. The new domain I am moving to is at the same hosting site. Tell me if this is the sequence of events which needs to happen:

1. Do a Zencart fresh install on the new domain
2. Copy old store to new domain, overwriting all files except the 2 configure.php files in /includes and /admin/includes
3. Overwrite the new database with the backup copy I made from the old store.
4. Modify .htaccess file in the root with a redirect like so:

**redirect 301 / ****http://meditationstore.net/**

and then wait a month or 2 for the search engines and directories to catch on and start sending traffic before deleting the old domain and files.

If this is wrong in any way of out of order, please elaborate. Other questions I have are:

Will the move permanantly destroy my backlinks I have gathered or do they "transfer"? Will it kill my search engine rankings? Is it a good idea? the whole reason I am considering the move is that my new domain has the keyword "meditation" in its name. Would that help my ratings and pageranks or should i just stay where i am at?

I had considered moving JUST my store to the other domain, since few of my products are backlinked, how much trouble would that be? what is involved? thanks peops!!
Thanks.

If all you are doing is changing the URL, then just upload your current files to the new directory, edit the config files to reflect the new information and then Import your database to the new one. No need to do a fresh install if the ZC version is the same.

As to your .htaccess for the old URL

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule old_dir/.() http://meditationstore.net/

What happens is that anyone going to http://meditationstore.net/old_dir/ (any page)
is automatically redirected to http://meditationstore.net/ .

Always make sure to immediately test any .htaccess changes.

Website Rob:

If all you are doing is changing the URL, then just upload your current files to the new directory, edit the config files to reflect the new information and then Import your database to the new one. No need to do a fresh install if the ZC version is the same.

As to your .htaccess for the old URL

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule old_dir/.() http://meditationstore.net/

What happens is that anyone going to http://meditationstore.net/old_dir/ (any page)
is automatically redirected to http://meditationstore.net/ .

Always make sure to immediately test any .htaccess changes.

Do I put that in the .htaccess of the new domain(meditationstore.net), the old(rda-enterprises.com), or both?

Put it in the old dir only.

Thanks WebsiteRob, That went smoothly...

Your welcome.

We all start out knowing nothing and now, everybody is all over the place with their knowledge. :wink:

humbll:

Will the move permanantly destroy my backlinks I have gathered or do they "transfer"? Will it kill my search engine rankings? Is it a good idea? the whole reason I am considering the move is that my new domain has the keyword "meditation" in its name. Would that help my ratings and pageranks or should i just stay where i am at?

I had considered moving JUST my store to the other domain, since few of my products are backlinked, how much trouble would that be? what is involved? thanks peops!!
Thanks.

hellozen...

What about the rest of these questions? thats kinda what i'd been wondering too

cheers!

barricades:

hellozen...

What about the rest of these questions? thats kinda what i'd been wondering too

cheers!

Hi. What I have learned is that moving the domain will break all backlinks unless you forward the domain permanantly to the new one. The minute you quit forwarding the domain (like you want to use it for something else), the next time search engines crawl to that site and see it is not linked to your new domain, they will drop all links in their database which refer to the old domain. As to backlinks from other sites (links you traded for or bought, or whatever), those may or may not be updated, and could send alot of unintrested people to the new domain if it is not of a similar topic as the old domain (they will do this anyway, eventually, it may take several months but they will drop as the new domains site is indexed.

The best thing to do is (if you can afford the 15 bucks a year for the 1st domain and not have a website on it), just permanantly 301 redirect the old domain to the new one using a line in .htaccess file on the root of the old domain as mentioned in a post above yours.. Leave it like that forever. Its the only way to make sure anybody clicking on an old link will reach your new site.

As far as the search engine rankings, they will probably not suffer if you are doing your SEO work properly. They may suffer for a few weeks, couple of months, maybe, but they will level out again if you have a good site.

As to whether it is a good idea, the customers (NOT the search engines they don't care about that much, good site content is what they like most), will probably like it better if the name of your domain matches keywords of your shop.

Good luck.