Member Avatar for newebmaster

I am redesigning a site in joomla, and moving it to new web host. The new site will be in Joomla 2.5, and the old site seems to be some version of Joomla 1.5 plus some home-made cms called netdocs. I am coming back to this after many years away.

If I understand the redirect procedure correctly, I put it in the meta tag of each page. I see that I could redirect an entire directory, which I assume correlates to a category in joomla, but where would I put that?
My other questions are :
1. will I end up with 2 permanent "directories" in the end: 1 for all the old site page redirects and the 2nd for the new joomla site?
2. I seem to remember that there is a way to create the new site on the new host and then just redirect the domain, but since the new site will be in a joomla folder it won't match the old site structure (that does not have that folder, so is there anyway to avoid hundreds of redirected pages?

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Short, practical plan that answers 's questions and builds on points from and .

Server-side 301 redirects are the right tool — not meta-refresh tags and not site-wide "nofollow" — because 301s tell search engines a page permanently moved and preserve SEO value. There is no need to create parallel dummy pages. A redirect rule intercepts the request and issues the 301 even if the original file no longer exists.

Where to put the redirects

  • If the old host still serves the domain while content is being moved, put the rules on the old host (Apache vhost or .htaccess).
  • If the old host will be shut down first, add the old domain as an alias on the new server and implement the redirects there before changing DNS.
  • If only the top folder name changes (for example /netdocs/ -> /joomla/), a single server rule will handle hundreds of pages. Example rules (place in the site root .htaccess or vhost):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^netdocs/(.*)$ /joomla/$1 [R=301,L]

Or, with mod_alias:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/netdocs/(.*)$ /joomla/$1

Handling non-trivial URL changes

  • When slugs or category names change, create a mapping (CSV) of old→new URLs and generate one 301 per page. Many admins script this to produce .htaccess lines or import into Joomla's redirect tools.
  • For performance, prefer vhost-level redirects in the server config over large .htaccess files if possible.

Staging and duplicate content

  • Do not rely on nofollow to prevent indexing. Use HTTP basic auth (password-protect staging) or add <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> on the staging site while building. Removing auth or the meta tag at launch avoids editing every page.
  • Keep 301 redirects in place for several months (commonly 6–12 months or longer), monitor with server logs and Search Console, and fix any crawl/404 issues as they appear.

These steps avoid having to maintain two parallel directory trees and give search engines a clean, measurable path from the old URLs to the new Joomla structure.

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Member Avatar for Member #949455

Best way to redirect 100's of pages of redesigned site

You need to Rewrite Mod on the htaccess file. Another word redirect the pages.

Member Avatar for JorgeM

I put it in the meta tag of each page.

Are you implying that you are leaving the current site in place and will redirect to the new site? Same domain name or different domain name?

Member Avatar for <M/>

Are you implying that you are leaving the current site in place and will redirect to the new site? Same domain name or different domain name?

I believe that is what he is referring to.

Member Avatar for JorgeM

Maybe not. It's not uncommon to move the site to a different domain, different structure, and trying to keep page rank by putting in the proper redirects. When the page structure changes, htaccess or URLrewriting (asp.net) is the way to go. Using the meta tag solution on each page at the previous site is a lot to manage.

Member Avatar for newebmaster

I want to keep and move the domain name to the new server & end the original hosting contract. That is why I am not sure what is best to do to keep from losing years of seo work they did. As I create content on the new server, I have duplicate pages on the new server. I don't want to delete the pages from the current server until I move the domain name to the new server. I was told to set up "no follow" on the new server so mulitple users can access it from their locations to help add contect & keep google from penalizing us for dup content, but after the domain points to the new server (a month from now, when all the content is reconstructed/moved), won't I have to manually go to each page & change them to follow?

I am trying to keep the same basic stucture, so only the top folder will change, from Netdocs to Joomla. What I don't understand is how will I redirect a page that no longer exist? Example: once I shut down the server that contains mysite.com/netdocs/category1/article1, and move the content to mysite.com/joomla/category1/article1 on the new server, where do I put the redirect statement? in the new page or do I create a parallel folder/file stucture on the new server to match each page from the the old folder structure with netdocs/category1/article1 & put the redirect there, like dummy pages with only the redirect statement on it?

Thanks for all your help. I am coming back to this from years & years away from it & am going now to look up what in the world "Rewrite Mod on the htaccess file" means!

Member Avatar for JorgeM

mysite.com/netdocs/category1/article1, and move the content to mysite.com/joomla/category1/article1

You don't need to have the original content for this redirection to work. I'm not a PHP/Apache developer, but I have implemented URL rewriting in ASP.NET. The concept is the same. Through rules, the web server intercepts the request and applies the action in th rule before providing content back to the user.

So the new server will be configured to accept for old and new domain. When the website receives traffic for the old domain, you will redirect traffic to the new UrL which is on the same web server. However, you will be sending a redirect so the web spiders get this info and update their data.

Here is an example where is use the URL rewrite module. This is an example of a redirect.

For instance, this is an old link: www.anitkb.com/2010/03/active-directory-domain-name.html
It will now take you to my new URL: www.itgeared.com/articles/1005-active-directory-domain-name/

Your scenario is easier because you only have to swap out a folder in the URL path.

Edited by JorgeM
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