When you need to switch a website from an old domain to a new domain, you need to redirect all your page URLs, this is when htaccess is your friend. Check out how to Force WebSite over HTTPS SSL with htaccess.
Redirecting WWW to non-WWW with htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirecting within the same domain
Using htaccess in your root level of your web server, how you redirect one page to another is:
RewriteRule ^url-string-to-redirect$ http://www.yourdomain.com/your-new-url-string [R=301,L]
Or
Redirect 301 /path/to-old-url http://www.cyourdomain.com/path/to-new-url
To redirect the contents of a whole directory to another use the below:
RewriteRule ^subdirectory/(.*)$ /anotherdirectory/$1 [R=301,NC,L]
To redirect the contents of a whole directory to the webserving root:
RewriteRule ^subdirectory/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L]
To redirect the contents of a subdirectory to another domain but in the same subdirectory
Redirect 301 /subdirectory http://www.anotherdomain.com/subdirectory
Make sure that the opening of the .htaccess file contains the 2 lines of code below which enables the Apache module to rewrite the URLS, then place your redirections below them
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On
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Redirecting to a different domain
Redirect URLs From Old To New Domain Using 301 Redirects In .htaccess
When you need to switch a website from an old domain to a new domain, you need to redirect all your page URLs, this is when htaccess is your friend.
The code below will create 301 url redirects for both the www and non-www version of ‘olddomain.com‘ to the new domain ‘newdomain.com‘.
Add this .htaccess file to the OLD site webroot and upload the files from the old site to the new to see a seamless switch from an old domain to a new one.
So the example below is redirecting all URLs from olddomain.com to newdomain.com, this is also the 301 redirect to use when using Googles Change of Address tool in Search Console.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]
The above will use the non-www as preference.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.olddomain.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^olddomain.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
The above here will redirect 301 all urls from one domain to another but give preference to the www version.
You can also apply this to a subdomain – so the example below is redirecting all URLs from subdomain.olddomain.com to subdomain.newdomain.com
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.olddomain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://subdomain.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.subdomain.olddomain.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://subdomain.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
You can also mask a domain which is like a redirect but keeps the old domain URL but shows the remaining part of the new URL of the new domain – example …
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://newdomain.com/$1 [P]
Force a Directory Folder or WebSite to go over HTTPS SSL with htaccess
To force a website to use the secure protocol SSL running the whole site over HTTPS you can make a simple edit to the .htaccess file in the document root.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]
To force a particular folder or directory to serve over SSL, create a .htaccess file in that folder and apply the following to it:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} somefolder
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.domain.com/somefolder/$1 [R,L]
This assumes SSL is enabled on the domain on an Apache Web Server with the mod_rewrite module enabled.
That’s it for now. 🙂
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