Domain change and effects on links

[Mirez]

Hi all,

I have a reasonably successful car forum with 6k users which has been well linked by Google and is nunber 1 in most searchers. However things have moved on since we launched and frankly the domain name I picked is quite specific as I didnt consider the future (rookie mistake!)

Can someone guide me through the best way of changing domain names? I suspect I will break all links if I just rename the forum on its new domain? Can I therefore run two domains side by side or is there another way I should look at?

Thanks for any replies!

[ziycon]

You can setup SMF with your new domain and update SMF using 'Repair Settings' to fix any paths and urls.

For the old domain you can add a 301 permanent redirect to the new domain, search engine's will see the permanent redirect and update all your search results, it should have a very minimal impact on your search engine rankings.

So if someone goes to http://www.olddomain.com/forum/thread/1/ they would be redirected to http://www.newdomain.com/forum/thread/1/

Search engines are intelligent enough these days to handle these type of instructions.

[Kindred]

You can not run a forum on two domains...   (well, you can, but  it takes the subforum mod)

To move it, you would have to use repair_settings.php on the new domain to reset all of the URLs... and then you would have to set up and htaccess redirect to bounce anything from the old domain to the new one...   and probably do a global replace in the smfmessages table of the database to replace the domains in any stored links

[Illori]

What is repair_settings.php?

[Mirez]

Awesome, thanks guys!!

[青山 素子]

As a further note, I recommend keeping the old domain and the redirect in place as long as you can. Old links don't get changed that often, and keeping those things in place means you'll continue to benefit from those links.